The issue for now is clear: you can't let your, say, laptop to anybody for an hour or even less without risking ha may easily get root access and maybe change your password or modify your system. It can simply be used to read "confidential" files, like personal mail, not like military secret but just private. Ubuntu is almost inviting you to do this by simply rebooting and choosing "Recovery", without any restriction (you need to know ho to use the very basics of console).
OTOH, inserting a LiveCD is almost as simple, and we can't prevent it. Still, it's more complex to do. 1) The person must have the CD here by hand, it may take time to get it 2) He must browse the system disks to find the data ha wants, use a chroot to change passwords (much more complex, only quite advanced users can do that) 3) This is a slightly different pace, since the "attacker" must use an external software/disc to do that, as opposed to the "included" Recovery mode. Using a CD is clearly choosing to attack the computer. Anyway, you have to secure your BIOS if you want a reasonably secured computer. But locking GRUB would help the user to go this way if he wants to. Now what are the drawbacks of asking for a password in GRUB? The only I can see is if you've lost your root/admin user password, or you have to work on a system in which you don't have any password though you have the authorization/request to administrate it. In this case, I think requiring the admin to use a LiveCD in not abusive. All in all, I'd rather suggest to activate password-locked GRUB, but I understand this question is hard to decide. Does anybody see other agruments on both sides? Cheers. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
