Logon screen can be bypassed using various shortcuts
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
arctica-greeter (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
Critical
|
Martin Wimpress | ||
lightdm (Ubuntu) |
Invalid
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
marco (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
Critical
|
Martin Wimpress | ||
mate-settings-daemon (Ubuntu) |
Invalid
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
Hi,
my little daughter discovered a logon screen bypass in Ubuntu Mate 21.10 after hitting the keyboard for a while.
It turns out that several keyboard shortcuts are allowed while Ubuntu Mate is locked (arctica-greeter):
- Mod4 + S (mate-search-tool)
- Mod4 + E (Open Caja / File Explorer)
- CTRL + Shift + Esc (mate-system-
- PRNT (Screenshot)
All of the mentioned shortcuts could be used to spawn a file explorer (Caja) or various other binaries as user "lightdm", who owns the logon screen.
Although an interactive terminal like mate-terminal, xterm, lxterm etc. could not be opened directly, there are various options to run commands as the lightdm user, for example by creating a shell script using "caja", and execute it directly using the GUI.
I've attached Proof-of-Concept GIFs for all shortcuts mentioned above. There might be additional shortcuts that could be used to achieve the same, however I'm not aware about every shortcut that is configured, but I suppose that the root cause is located somewhere in arctica-greeter, rather than within every single binary launched by shortcuts.
The bug was reproduced on a fresh installation of Ubuntu Mate 21.10. I haven't tested other versions of Ubuntu Mate yet.
Please find additional version details below:
$ apt-cache policy lightdm
lightdm:
Installed: 1.30.0-0ubuntu4
Candidate: 1.30.0-0ubuntu4
Version table:
*** 1.30.0-0ubuntu4 500
500 http://
100 /var/lib/
$ apt-cache policy arctica-greeter
arctica-greeter:
Installed: 0.99.1.5-2nmu1
Candidate: 0.99.1.5-2nmu1
Version table:
*** 0.99.1.5-2nmu1 500
500 http://
100 /var/lib/
Thanks,
Basti
summary: |
- Lock screen can be bypassed using various shortcuts + Logon screen can be bypassed using various shortcuts |
description: | updated |
tags: | added: impish |
tags: | added: hirsute |
tags: | added: groovy |
tags: |
added: jammy removed: groovy |
Changed in marco (Ubuntu): | |
status: | Triaged → In Progress |
Changed in arctica-greeter (Ubuntu): | |
status: | Triaged → In Progress |
Changed in arctica-greeter (Ubuntu): | |
status: | In Progress → Fix Committed |
Changed in marco (Ubuntu): | |
status: | In Progress → Fix Committed |
Your daughter does good work :)
Thanks