[Gllug] I have forgotten my root password, I am a muppet.

[Ian Northeast]

John Hearns wrote:
> 
> Jim Cheetham wrote:
> 
> >Boot from tomsrtbt, mount your disk's / partition on /mnt, go in there
> >and edit the passwd/shadow file to remove the password for root.
> >
> Oh, that's too obvious.
> My way is much more fun, and gives you the chance to wear your black
> hat for the day.
> Seriously though, its a good opportunity to get to know password cracking
> tools.
> (And yes, before the howls start, there ARE legitimate uses for John the
> Ripper etc.
> Cracking tools can help you, as I've said, recover systems, teach you
> just how
> easy it is for real black hats to run these things, and also to check for
> weak passwords.)

All true. However, one thing cracking tools will *not* do is crack a
root password set by even a semi competent sysadmin on an important
machine. This will be non dictionary based and a mix of numbers, upper
and lower case.

Regards, Ian

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