On 4/16/06, Willie Wong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sun, Apr 16, 2006 at 09:54:33PM +1000, Penguin Lover Alan E. Davis > squawked: > > He felt betrayed. I understand why, I think: what's secure about > > GNU/Linux if anyone can boot the system and reset his passwords? > > That is the same regardless of operating system. > Physical access == no security. > > > How can anyone easily avoid the problem of anyone being able to access > > the guts of his machine using a live CD? I already thought of one: > > use the BIOS to disallow booting from a CD or Floppy, and set a > > password on the BIOS. Don't know whether all BIOSes will allow this, > > and anyway, isn't it possible on a lot of motherboards to short out > > the EPROM and thus reset the password of the BIOS? > > You can also encrypt the contents of your hard drive. > http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Disk-Encryption-HOWTO/
But I can still get that hard drive and smash it to bits ;) Get a big dog. Tie him next to your PC. Seriously, if your friend can find an OS that can restrict access even if the attacker has physical access to the PC, then he should use that. Encryption is a good solution, even for backups. But it's a bit overboard for most users. -- Jed R. Mallen GPG key ID: 81E575A3 fp: 4E1E CBA5 7E6A 2F8B 8756 660A E54C 39D6 81E5 75A3 http://jed.sitesled.com -- [email protected] mailing list
