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On Tuesday 25 March 2008, Liviu Andronic wrote: |
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> > But you can boot from a LiveCD, mount your harddrive, chroot and |
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> > then give root another password. |
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> |
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> But then, conventional passwords are as useless. One needs no more |
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> than physical access to the computer, a LiveCD and a couple minutes |
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> in order to become the super user of your system. Basically, the |
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> password seems useful only to know whether anyone has changed it |
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> behind your back. |
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Let me guess - you own a notebook and most of your exposure to running a |
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computer is limited to that, and you have never administered a real |
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server somewhere, right? |
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It's very very easy to keep your servers safe from physical access |
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attacks - make sure the bad guys can't touch it. This is so easy to do |
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it's laughable - we use a locked door. The only people who have a key |
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are those who have to root password anyway. |
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On a notebook, there isn't an OS in existence that is immune to a |
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LiveCD. If this concerns you, apply some biometrics and encrypted |
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filesystem patches. Or stop using notebooks. Or stop using computers |
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that someone else can touch. |
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-- |
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Alan McKinnon |
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alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com |
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-- |
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gentoo-user@l.g.o mailing list |
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