4 ms·

Grub is password-protected, what do you do? (Boot from a live distro and chroot into the on-disk one)

• 300 13y ago
  Nice. Or if you use Gentoo, gentoo=nox on the end of the boot line at the boot loader.
  • ominous_prime 13y ago
    How do you modify the boot loader if you don't have the boot loader password?
    • th0br0 13y ago
      You supply the boot loader yourself... load from USB/CD/younameit
• servowire 13y ago
  Boot debian install CD, reinstall Grub without password.
• afhsfsfdsss88 13y ago
  This is what came to me first. I have unrestricted physical access? I probably own the machine. If the data on the storage is not encrypted, I own that too. If I don't want to disassemble anything, I just plug in a liveUSB and it's all mine. If the BIOS has USB/CD boot disabled? I pull the CMOS battery. If that fails? The google probably knows the BIOS reset sequence for your board and soon so will I. ======================================================================= Physical security is important too and FDE is not optional. [Even if you have nothing to hide]
  • quasque 13y ago
    The CMOS battery often has nothing to do with BIOS settings, on many modern laptops it's stored in the BIOS flash memory, with no such reset sequence available. If properly secured, physical hacking is not as easy as it used to be.
    • afhsfsfdsss88 13y ago
      NVRAM can be overwritten with a factory fresh BIOS image....
      • quasque 13y ago
        Yes, but then you're in the realm of interfacing directly with the hardware to reflash the chip, somewhat upping the difficulty of this hack.