From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Anindya Mozumdar Subject: Re: Root Permissions Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 14:12:48 +0530 Sender: linux-admin-owner@vger.kernel.org Message-ID: <20040701084248.GA21579@cmi.ac.in> References: <20040701050425.GA7890@cmi.ac.in> Mime-Version: 1.0 Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040701050425.GA7890@cmi.ac.in> List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: linux-admin@vger.kernel.org Hi, Probably I framed the question badly, so everyone has misunderstood what I asked. I am not at all interested in reinstalling or preventing my friend from doing what he wants. I wanted to know what he may have possibly setup so that he can become root any time, so that I can do the same. And I wanted to know how it can be reversed, so that my own system is protected from such attacks. Thanks. Anindya. On Thu, Jul 01, 2004 at 10:34:25AM +0530, Anindya Mozumdar wrote: > Hi, > The following problem may be trivial to some of you, however my > knowledge of linux is limited, and I dont understand how can it be > done. > In our institute, we use Debian Linux, and the boot loader is lilo. > For those machines where the lilo password is not set, ANY ONE can > get a root shell by simply interrupting the boot process and typing > linux init=/bin/sh in the boot prompt. > One of my friends obtained a root shell in this manner, and has > either made some changes, or set up some program, by which he can > become root any time, without acutally knowing the root password, > which is known only to our system administrator. What may be the > possible things he has done to setup his program, and how can it be > reversed ? > Thanks in advance. > Anindya Mozumdar. > - > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-admin" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anindya Mozumdar anindya (at) cmi (dot) ac (dot) in "Bad language isn't second nature to me - it's first. Bad language and bad behaviour. It's a f****** winning combination, you've got to admit." - Ozzy Osbourne