[5084] in SIPB bug reports
xscreensaver abuse for retaining workstations: -fg black -bg black
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Glenn P Tesler)
Tue Dec 13 08:55:25 1994
To: bug-sipb@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 1994 08:55:11 EST
From: Glenn P Tesler <gptesler@MIT.EDU>
Hi,
The clusters are very crowded these days, and so it is not
amusing to find people abusing the new 10 minute idle time rule.
Last night, a machine near me appeared to be dead, with a
completely black screen, but when the clever user returned, he
explained to his friend his scheme:
He ran the screen saver with black foreground &
background to fool people into believing it was
a dead machine!
He then went away for another 50 minutes or so.
I tried this, and it works; just use xsetroot to get rid of
the root window cursor, and xscreensaver with foreground/background
black. The xscreensaver menu is unreadable, but if you remember the
list of items, you can select "Lock Screen" by position, and when you
unlock it, you don't need to position the cursor anywhere in
particular to type your password; on the other hand, no one else can
find the "click here to logout jruser" button. This is more effective
than ordinary screen blanking with "xset s ..." because of the password
lock.
I've seen other machines with completely black screens too,
but don't know if these were due to a similar scheme, or were actual
dead machines, and I have no idea how widespread actual abuse is.
Perhaps a fascist fg/bg color contrast requirement should be
imposed in xscreensaver to render this scheme more difficult.
Glenn Tesler
