> How do other unixes differ in regards to this?
on intel-based hardware this is always going to be the case..you can boot
off floppy. if you disable floppy booting, you can go into bios and
re-enable it. If you password the bios, you can short it so it loses it's
settings. Given time and physical access, information can be pulled off an
intel box. You can only make it more difficult, not impossible. (You can,
however, encrypt sensitive data so that even if you get the data, getting
useful information out of the data is not practical, at least)
the alpha-based hardware I've worked with is the same, but my experience
is limited enough that I won't say it applies across the board.
I don't know about sparc hardware, though a co-worker (the same one who
argued for changing an unknown root password in one reboot earlier) was
telling me about a sparc station (don't know specifics) that refused to
fall to anything, so I maybe they have some interesting scheme. I don't
know.
It's important to note that all I'm talking about here is hardware below
the OS. The OS can only make it less secure, not more.
Physical security is *incredibly* important. There is no substitute for
it.
Vinnie
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