Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 10:47:09 +0100 From: Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk> To: Tim Aslat <tim@spyderweb.com.au> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Change root user name? possible? Message-ID: <20040826094709.GD87719@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <20040826084906.5ef2b1ad@bofh.spyderweb.com.au> References: <20040825225051.7730643D58@mx1.FreeBSD.org> <62E23207-F6EB-11D8-8247-003065ABFD92@mac.com> <20040826084906.5ef2b1ad@bofh.spyderweb.com.au>
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On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 08:49:06AM +0930, Tim Aslat wrote:
> In the immortal words of Charles Swiger <cswiger@mac.com>...
> > Whether this gains you much security is another question entirely, and
> > you risk breaking single-user mode and various low-level pieces of=20
> > software which expect root to exist, but it can be done.
>=20
> I know it can be done, a couple of typos in vipw and I lost the root
> account, very disconcerting, but single use mode still seemed to work,
> probably because the toor account was still intact even though it has a
> password of *.
Actually, single user mode doesn't consult the password file at all --
or anything much in /etc except for /etc/fstab, and even that you can
avoid. It gives you a superuser login session simply by setting the
UID to 0, which is all that really counts to the lower leves of the
system.
If you think about it, that's a really useful design feature. It
means you can recover the system even if your /etc directory gets
completely scrambled. A good measure of the strength of your unix-fu
is how badly trashed a system you can recover without having to
re-install. You'ld be amazed at what some people have managed to
resurrect.
Cheers,
Matthew
--=20
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 26 The Paddocks
Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614 Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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