COMMAND
KDE
SYSTEMS AFFECTED
Systems running KDE
PROBLEM
KDE is a sort of neat desktop built on the Qt widget class (see
http://www.kde.org). A word of warning to anyone running it
however - the file manager talks to the other modules over a
basically unsecured TCP socket. You can ask it to copy files and
all sorts of lovely stuff. Fortunately its not got any obvious
major features (the file copy for example is to their local
disk). However if you can get a file onto their box (eg into
their anonymous ftp area) you can ask kfm to copy it to
~user/.rhosts. Credit for this goes to Alan Cox.
SOLUTION
The fix appears to be to make the KDE software communicate over
an AF_UNIX socket and set file permissions appropriately on the
socket name. This requires you rebuild a fair chunk of the KDE
software but the end result seems to work as well as before.