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copy-paste: Discuss focus stealing #1109

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Jan 28, 2021
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copy-paste: Discuss focus stealing #1109

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9 changes: 9 additions & 0 deletions user/common-tasks/copy-paste.md
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Expand Up @@ -47,6 +47,15 @@ Therefore, you should always copy clipboard data only from *more trusted* to *le

See also [this article](https://blog.invisiblethings.org/2011/03/13/partitioning-my-digital-life-into.html) for more information on this topic, and some ideas of how we might solve this problem in some future version of Qubes, as well as [this message](https://groups.google.com/group/qubes-devel/msg/48b4b532cee06e01) from qubes-devel.

### Focus stealing

The above discussion assumes that you control which window is focused in dom0 at the time of the paste.
However, if your dom0 window manager is configured to give focus to newly created windows (which, as of Qubes 4.0, is true in the default install with Xfce), then a malicious qube could "steal the focus" by creating a window just before you press Ctrl+Shift+V, and it would receive the data instead of your intended target.
(Focus stealing is a risk any time you are typing confidential data, but a Qubes clipboard paste probably presents the greatest risk of leaking an entire password before you have time to react.)
You may be able to mitigate this risk by changing the window manager configuration.
For example, with Xfce, you could run `xfwm4-settings` in dom0, go to the "Focus" tab, and un-check "Automatically give focus to newly created windows".
However, we have not confirmed whether such settings are sufficient to prevent a malicious qube from stealing the focus in all cases.

Clipboard automatic policy enforcement
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