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. > - > : send the line "unsubscribe linux-admin" in > the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > 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 - : send the line "unsubscribe linux-admin" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
