Re: root password forgotten

[Stig Brautaset <stigbrau@start.no>]

* Andreas Leitner <nozone@sbox.tugraz.at> spake thus:
> On Sat, 2002-01-26 at 03:03, Sean 'Shaleh' Perry wrote:
>> 
>> On 25-Jan-2002 Michael Jinks wrote:
>>> One thing you can do: hold left shift during boot to get a prompt, and
>>> at the "LILO:" prompt enter "Linux init=/bin/sh" (possibly replacing
>>> "Linux" with another image name if your box doesn't have the default).
>>> 
>>> The root fs will come up read-only.  To be able to mount other
>>> filesystems and otherwise bring the box to a usable state,
>>> 
>>> mount -o rw,remount /
>>> 
>> 
>> (lower case 'linux init=/bin/sh' usually)
> 
> Wow, I kind of knew there were ways to gain root access or even find out
> the root password quite easily, but that's really really easy...
> 
> On every standard Debian install, anybody can gain the root password
> within minutes (given the attacker has phyiscal access to the box):
> 
> 1) Issue "linux init=/bin/sh" on the lilo promt
> 2) Use john to crack the root password

The machine would have to be a monster if john where to use only minutes
to crack a reasonable root password.

Why bother with john anyway? You can just reset the password (or create
another user with belonging to root's group). Oh, maybe you wanted it to
be undetected? 

Stig

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