Thanks CB, I got your private response.
For what it's worth, the relative insecurity of Linux at the console is
well-known, even to this newbie. There are workarounds, of course, such as
making it boot from the primary hard drive only, and password-protecting
the BIOS so no one can change it to boot otherwise. Also, not allowing
anyone except root to mount any drive or filesystem, and keeping the CD-ROM
and diskette drives unmounted by default. There are probably other options,
as well.
Dave
At 11:43 PM 4/12/01 -0700, you wrote:
>"Mcintosh, Duncan" wrote:
> >
> > Have you tried at boot up to run linux single?. That should get you
> started.
>
>To find the answer I duplicated the problem he had. The answer is no,
>you can't specify runlevel 1, nor can you specify init=/bin/sh. The
>problem is that in all of these methods, the linux kernel still tries to
>pass off control to init. init quickly dies and you are left with a
>kernel panic.
>
>I sent him a private reply because in the process of finding the answer,
>I found something that was a little disconcerting, namely how easy it
>was to get root on the machine. I am thinking over things before I
>publicize it. In retrospect, I don't like how easy it was to get root
>in this case. Of course, if you have console access to ANY x86 machine,
>getting root is trivial.
>--
>Blue skies... Todd
>| Get a bigger hammer! | Sometimes you get what you want. |
>| http://www.mrball.net | Sometimes you get experience. |
>| http://faq.mrball.net | --unknown origin |
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