From owner-cvs-all Mon Dec 10 22: 5:20 2001 Delivered-To: cvs-all@freebsd.org Received: from espresso.q9media.com (espresso.q9media.com [216.254.138.122]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 954BF37B416; Mon, 10 Dec 2001 22:05:17 -0800 (PST) Received: (from mike@localhost) by espresso.q9media.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) id fBB63aT29653; Tue, 11 Dec 2001 01:03:36 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from mike) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 01:03:36 -0500 From: Mike Barcroft To: Paul Richards Cc: Mike Silbersack , Alfred Perlstein , John Baldwin , mini@haikugeek.com, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/sys/boot/i386/loader version src/share/examp Message-ID: <20011211010336.Q1956@espresso.q9media.com> References: <20011210201909.O92148@elvis.mu.org> <20011210221836.N1956@espresso.q9media.com> <616630000.1008044969@lobster.originative.co.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <616630000.1008044969@lobster.originative.co.uk>; from paul@freebsd-services.com on Tue, Dec 11, 2001 at 04:29:29AM -0000 Organization: The FreeBSD Project Sender: owner-cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Paul Richards writes: > You need the superuser password to get to single user if the console is > secure. The loader can be used to circumvent that now. Interesting, I hadn't seen that before. This is probably only useful at preventing people that don't have an account on the system, and don't have physical access to the harddisk, CD-ROM/DVD-ROM, or floppy drives from gaining root. To gain root from an account and console access, one need only craft an init(8) and change the loader init_path. Perhaps a secure loader would be useful, such that it doesn't allow interrupting. Similar things could be done with the pre-loader boot, but this write from loader feature seems so useful to me that I can't imagine why we would want to turn it off by default, particularly given the intrinsic insecurities of our current loader. Best regards, Mike Barcroft To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message