no root password?
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| Author | Content | ||||
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| tuxchick Jun 20, 2007 2:26 PM EST |
"My little one has grown up. As much as it hurts, Linux no longer needs me to support non-geek users." Silly dad, it's easy. Just keep a secret root login and every so often break something. :D |
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| mohan34u Jun 23, 2007 11:17 PM EST |
Say to your daughter!! Happy journey with Ubuntu... and ask her to say "Ubuntu Rocks... " to her friends... | ||||
| schestowitz Jun 24, 2007 4:01 AM EST |
Ubuntu doesn't do the traditional root routine. It's all about sudo. Simplifications help. | ||||
| dinotrac Jun 24, 2007 4:21 AM EST |
>Ubuntu doesn't do the traditional root routine. It's all about sudo. Simplifications help. Easy to set one up, though, if you want to. |
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| jdixon Jun 24, 2007 7:35 AM EST |
> Easy to set one up, though, if you want to. Yeah, but I understand that breaks the sudo process in Ubuntu. When you sudo a command, Ubuntu expects your password, since root doesn't have one. If you set up a root account, it then expects root's password instead. Better to just set up a second user account on the machine, and use it to break things, since it will still have full sudo rights. |
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| dinotrac Jun 24, 2007 7:37 AM EST |
> it then expects root's password instead. Nope. Still takes yours. |
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| jdixon Jun 24, 2007 8:16 AM EST |
> Nope. Still takes yours. OK. "I was misinformed". :) |
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| azerthoth Jun 24, 2007 9:20 AM EST |
Easy enough anyway to modify rights 'visudo' to edit the file and change individuals so that their individual password is acceptable for administrative functions. | ||||
| tqk Jun 24, 2007 10:19 AM EST |
"Dad, how come logcheck is reporting root logins when I'm not even there, and root's .bash_history is full of misspellings you do all the time? And by the way, I've locked grub and BIOS down with passwords." Go ahead. Try to get her back now. :-P |
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| techiem2 Jun 24, 2007 12:16 PM EST |
Hardware bios reset -> change boot order -> boot livecd -> "fix" grub :) 'Course I'm sure a smart enough kiddo would think of something even harder to get around after that. (heh, hacker wars with your kid....) |
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| mvermeer Jun 24, 2007 7:16 PM EST |
This story, and this thread, made my morning :-) Thanks! |
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| hkwint Jun 27, 2007 4:31 AM EST |
Could also add your user to group 'wheel', normally does the trick. I'm to lazy to use 'visudo' anyway, I always use 'sudo nano /etc/sudoers'.
You can give grub a password, not? Also, the BIOS should have a password to disable changing the boot sequence, thereby disabling bypassing using a LiveCD. An encrypted partition (on top of an LVM container which in turn is on top of a software-RAID partition) would also help against bypassing, I used to recommend AES-i586 256 bit, but that seems outdated these days I recently read somewhere. Lastly, your case should have a lock to prevent people from resetting the BIOS by using a piece of Alu-foil (I once did this, because I was to lazy to find the soldering-iron). A lock might be a bit different to implement on a laptop however. |
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| dinotrac Jun 27, 2007 5:33 AM EST |
>thereby disabling bypassing using a LiveCD. Unless you yank the battery... I suppose, if one got really determined and had alone time with the box, one could slide in a "LiveCD" in the form of a hard drive and boot from it... At that point, however, we've gone way beyond normal physical security. If somebody can take your box apart, they can do anything. |
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| techiem2 Jun 27, 2007 6:25 AM EST |
That's kinda what I meant by hardware bios reset (either that or the reset jumper if there is one) :) But yeah, as you said,
No box is secure once you have physical access to it. And I assume even an encrypted volume isn't truly secure. There's probably something out there that could crack it. All ya need is time and the right tools. |
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| jdixon Jun 27, 2007 6:30 AM EST |
> All ya need is time and the right tools Yeah. And it doesn't take all that long to make a sector by sector copy of a hard drive, so the time needed with the original system isn't as long as some might think. |
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| rijelkentaurus Jun 28, 2007 11:12 AM EST |
Only the first user is in the sudo group by default, so essentially the first user is an administrator. At least that's how it used to work. |
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| dinotrac Jun 28, 2007 11:23 AM EST |
>At least that's how it used to work. Still does, but you can designate any user as an administrator by checking a box in the user's dialog. So simple a MCSE could do it. Maybe. |
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| Sander_Marechal Jun 28, 2007 1:04 PM EST |
Definately not. He'd be asking where the Active Directory interface was. |
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