# 5.7. Security

Although Konsole is prepared to be installed root-suid, it is not intented to be used so. Don't do it. Konsole drops privileges immediately after being started. Secure keyboard (X11) is not implemented which means that other X11 applications can get the keyevents from Konsole, if they want. Beware of trojan horses.

Konsole does not fchown(2) the pseudo tty. This means, that in a multiuser environment someone may eavesdrop your (root) session. For newer Linux kernels (2.1/2.2), Konsole will deny such attempts. To validate whether this is possible or not, try the following within Konsole:

     $ tty
     /dev/ttyp3

As another (non-root) user, try:

     $ echo 'test' > /dev/ttyp3

If you receive the string within the Konsole's session, the session is insecure.

For other UNIXes, this hole will be closed in a bit, but the solution will require Konsole being installed root/suid. I'm aware, that this might not be possible in every installation, but i cannot help that.