[Gllug] tips and tricks...

[John Edwards]

On Fri, Feb 08, 2002 at 12:33:35AM +0000, Nix wrote:
> On Thu, 7 Feb 2002, Michael E. A. yowled:
>> Its amazing the kind of tips/tricks you can learn at a LUG meeting.
>> Just the other day i decided to boot into my SuSE Partition to do a bit
>> of 'Spring Cleaning', when i realised i had forgotten my root password.
>> 
>> I was contemplating a reinstall when i just happened to mention it to
>> 'Matt', at yesterdays Lonix Meeting.
>> I was adviced to mount the partition using 'tomsrtbt' (or similar) and
>> edit the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files.
> 
> No need to do that.
> 
> Pass
> 
> init=/bin/sh
> 
> to the kernel via the LILO command line, &c.
> 
> Bingo, instant root prompt.
> 
> (Of course you need physical access for this so it is not a security
> hole; someone with such access can already do anything.)

Unless your boot loader (LILO or GRUB) has a password set.

(Yes I pretty much locked myself out of a box once, it required moving 
the hard disk into another machine to fix it).


-- 
#------------------------------------------------------------#
|      John Edwards    Email: John.Edwards at uk.com            |
|                                                            |
|     "Security vulnerabilities are here to stay."           |
|   Scott Culp, Manager, Microsoft Security Response Center  |
#------------------------------------------------------------#

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