Re: Small security option

From: Mitchell Blank Jr
Date: Wed Sep 17 2003 - 20:16:56 EST


John R Moser wrote:
> Some sysadmins like to disable the other boot devices and password-protect
> the bios. Good, but if the person can pass init=, you're screwed.

1. If you have physical access to the machine you're screwed anyway (boot
from a CD... if BIOS is password-protected just temporarily put the
harddrive in another machine)

2. In the relatively rare cases that you have physical access to the console
but not the machine (locked down kiosks or secured lab settings) you can
(and should) secure the bootloader. This prevents any malicious command
line options (think "root=my.nfs.server:/toolkit") not just "init=".

So this patch is basically pointless.

-Mitch
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