You’re in the front of a Linux computer, you need a root access. What do you do? • Hacker News Board

Re: You’re in the front of a Linux computer, you need a root access. What do you do?

#11

Post by yuvadam » Mon, Mar 24, 2014, 1:15 PM UTC

Not sure what this article is trying to say. I can gain "root access" just by dismantling the hard drive and mounting it on a machine I own.

This is exactly why everybody should be using full-disk encryption. It is ridiculously easy to set it up both on OS X (with FileVault) and Linux (with a plethora of options), and even on Windows machines. There is absolutely no reason why not to do this.

Re: You’re in the front of a Linux computer, you need a root access. What do you do?

#12

Post by profil » Mon, Mar 24, 2014, 1:16 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #5

One does not even need to enable password protection of Grub. Linux will ask for the root password before granting access to recovery mode. That stopped working at the early 2000s. The author must use a pretty stupid distro to not notice it by 2013. Anyway, want to gain access to the computer? Get a screwdriver.

You could just do like pmorici said and add `init=/bin/sh` instead of booting into recovery mode.

Re: You’re in the front of a Linux computer, you need a root access. What do you do?

#13

Post by Piskvorrr » Mon, Mar 24, 2014, 1:16 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #5

One does not even need to enable password protection of Grub. Linux will ask for the root password before granting access to recovery mode. That stopped working at the early 2000s. The author must use a pretty stupid distro to not notice it by 2013. Anyway, want to gain access to the computer? Get a screwdriver.

Sure, physical access > root access; that is undeniable :)

Re: You’re in the front of a Linux computer, you need a root access. What do you do?

#14

Post by Piskvorrr » Mon, Mar 24, 2014, 1:16 PM UTC

yuvadam wrote: post #11

Not sure what this article is trying to say. I can gain "root access" just by dismantling the hard drive and mounting it on a machine I own. This is exactly why everybody should be using full-disk encryption. It is ridiculously easy to set it up both on OS X (with FileVault) and Linux (with a plethora of options), and even on Windows machines. There is absolutely no reason why not to do this.

Yup. The performance impact is negligible nowadays.

Re: You’re in the front of a Linux computer, you need a root access. What do you do?

#15

Post by pdw » Mon, Mar 24, 2014, 1:20 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #5

One does not even need to enable password protection of Grub. Linux will ask for the root password before granting access to recovery mode. That stopped working at the early 2000s. The author must use a pretty stupid distro to not notice it by 2013. Anyway, want to gain access to the computer? Get a screwdriver.

If you have access to grub, you can edit the kernel command line and add init=/bin/sh. That will drop you in the initramfs, and you can mount the system's filesystems (assuming they're not encrypted of course).

Re: You’re in the front of a Linux computer, you need a root access. What do you do?

#16

Post by wslh » Mon, Mar 24, 2014, 1:29 PM UTC

Piskvorrr wrote: post #14

yuvadam wrote: post #11

Not sure what this article is trying to say. I can gain "root access" just by dismantling the hard drive and mounting it on a machine I own. This is exactly why everybody should be using full-disk encryption. It is ridiculously easy to set it up both on OS X (with FileVault) and Linux (with a plethora of options), and even on Windows machines. There is absolutely no reason why not to do this.

Yup. The performance impact is negligible nowadays.

Indeed microprocessors like the i7 supports AES encryption.

Re: You’re in the front of a Linux computer, you need a root access. What do you do?

#17

Post by servowire » Mon, Mar 24, 2014, 1:32 PM UTC

Alt+Magic sysreq key+b Put in a USB stick with Puppy Linux. Boot, Root.

Or did we need to get root access to the previous running OS? Be more specific in that case ;)

Re: You’re in the front of a Linux computer, you need a root access. What do you do?

#18

Post by servowire » Mon, Mar 24, 2014, 1:32 PM UTC

Piskvorrr wrote: post #2

Grub is password-protected, what do you do? (Boot from a live distro and chroot into the on-disk one)

Boot debian install CD, reinstall Grub without password.

Re: You’re in the front of a Linux computer, you need a root access. What do you do?

#19

Post by emilw » Mon, Mar 24, 2014, 1:36 PM UTC

If enabled, you use a firewire connection. You don't even need to reboot and can connect as root to any running processes and filesystems.

http://www.breaknenter.org/projects/inception/

Yes, that is actual working technology.

Re: You’re in the front of a Linux computer, you need a root access. What do you do?

#20

Post by gphilip » Mon, Mar 24, 2014, 1:46 PM UTC

You're in front of a Linux computer. You compile an exploit you read about on Slashdot, run the resulting executable, and voila!, you are dropped into a root shell. After a couple of seconds you realize that you have no ideas on what to do next. That's when it registers that you are not as "young" as you once were ...