Re: SECURITY PROBLEM: autofs [all versions]

[Daniel Burrows <Daniel_Burrows@brown.edu>]

On Sat, Jul 01, 2000 at 10:19:39AM +0200, Thor <thor@tech-center.com> was heard to say:
> if you have physical access to the console and floppy drive you can always 
> start with a boot + root floppy, mount the hard disk and modify the 
> mounted /etc/passwd file ... this is an old trick, usefull when you 
> loose the root password ;-)

  ..unless, of course, the machine's owner has disabled floppy boots..in which
case, you have to open the thing up and reset the BIOS; if the machine is in
an environment with someone watching what's going on (eg, a school computer
lab), this is fairly suspicious behavior and likely to bring unwanted
attention..

  Daniel

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