On Sep 18, 2007, at 11:19 AM, Ralph Katz wrote:
This is a local vulnerability, yes. No worse than pulling the plug. Ofcourse that IS the problem. Only keyboard access is needed for this. To test, I booted a second etch computer which comes up to a gnome desktop, and hit alt-sysrq-i. The display shows a nasty pink colored image... Next was to hit alt-sysrq-b which must be the linux 3-finger salute known to windows people.
Hmm. I see what you're getting at, but is this really any worse than the default ctrl-alt-del behavior? (Or is there a security warning about that, too?)
Frankly, if someone has physical access, a reboot is just about the least of your worries. It's pretty trivial for them to gain root access if they have physical access to the hardware.