#1089855 Window manager warnings should not log window titles

Package:
gnome-shell
Source:
gnome-shell
Description:
graphical shell for the GNOME desktop
Submitter:
Josh Triplett
Date:
2024-12-14 04:03:02 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1089855#3
Date:
2024-12-14 04:01:44 UTC
From:
To:
gnome-shell recently changed its window manager warning messages to
include the titles of windows. This logs potentially sensitive user
information in system log files.

Previous log message format:

Aug 13 10:06:05 o gnome-shell[1072]: Window manager warning: Ping serial 79896884 was reused for window W1, previous use was for window W128.

New log message format:

Dec 13 18:00:59 o gnome-shell[1120]: Window manager warning: Ping serial 35993321 was reused for window W1 (Facing the Git commit-ID collision catastrophe [LWN.net] — Mozilla Firefox), previous use was for window W33 (~).

Many user processes are careful to avoid logging potentially sensitive
information, and this breaks that expectation.

(I recognize that this is a tradeoff between user privacy and the
usefulness of log files.)