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Query abouut root account

July 16th, 2012 - 04:10 am ET by Bret Busby | Report spam
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Hello.

I have a server that is running Firestarter on Debian 5.

I have forgotten the root password, and have not logged into root on
that computer, or updated the system, for about a year, I think.

I do remember a user login, and have successfully "ssh'd" into the
system as that user.

Is there some way that I can access the root account, and replace the
password, without having to overwrite the system via installing a new
system to replace what exists?

Thank you in anticipation.

Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
..

"So once you do know what the question actually is,
you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
A Trilogy In Four Parts",
written by Douglas Adams,
published by Pan Books, 1992



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#1 Denis Witt
July 16th, 2012 - 04:30 am ET | Report spam
On 16.07.2012 10:01, Bret Busby wrote:

I have forgotten the root password, and have not logged into root on
that computer, or updated the system, for about a year, I think.



Do you have physical access to this machine? Or can you get someone to
boot it with a live-CD?

If so you can boot from the live-CD, chroot into the system on the disk
and change the root passwd.

Bye.


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#2 Alex Mestiashvili
July 16th, 2012 - 04:40 am ET | Report spam
On 07/16/2012 10:01 AM, Bret Busby wrote:
Hello.

I have a server that is running Firestarter on Debian 5.

I have forgotten the root password, and have not logged into root on
that computer, or updated the system, for about a year, I think.

I do remember a user login, and have successfully "ssh'd" into the
system as that user.

Is there some way that I can access the root account, and replace the
password, without having to overwrite the system via installing a new
system to replace what exists?

Thank you in anticipation.

Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
..

"So once you do know what the question actually is,
you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
A Trilogy In Four Parts",
written by Douglas Adams,
published by Pan Books, 1992




Hi,

If you can access the computer physically you can boot using
init=/bin/bash and mount options for root fs as rw.
than you will need to run passwd to set the new password.

Or just use one of the old root exploits :)

Regards,
Alex


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#3 HP
July 16th, 2012 - 05:20 am ET | Report spam
Hash: SHA1

On 16.07.2012 10:01, Bret Busby wrote:
Hello.

I have a server that is running Firestarter on Debian 5.

I have forgotten the root password, and have not logged into root
on that computer, or updated the system, for about a year, I
think.


Did you update that system?
If not, you may be "lucky" and your kernel still is vulnerable to a
(local) root-exploit. Iirc there was one at start of this year (or was
that last year?it was some pre 3.x kernel).

Greetings
HP


PS:
It may have been this one:
http://git.zx2c4.com/CVE-2012-0056/...podipper.c
This address only accepts mail from debian mailing lists.
Everything else is sent to /dev/null



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#4 Luiz L. Marins
July 16th, 2012 - 09:10 am ET | Report spam
Alex,

See here:
https://sites.google.com/site/linux...ha-do-root

Use Translater Google





Em 16-07-2012 05:17, Alex Mestiashvili escreveu:
On 07/16/2012 10:01 AM, Bret Busby wrote:
Hello.

I have a server that is running Firestarter on Debian 5.

I have forgotten the root password, and have not logged into root on
that computer, or updated the system, for about a year, I think.

I do remember a user login, and have successfully "ssh'd" into the
system as that user.

Is there some way that I can access the root account, and replace the
password, without having to overwrite the system via installing a new
system to replace what exists?

Thank you in anticipation.

Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
..

"So once you do know what the question actually is,
you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
A Trilogy In Four Parts",
written by Douglas Adams,
published by Pan Books, 1992



Hi,

If you can access the computer physically you can boot using
init=/bin/bash and mount options for root fs as rw.
than you will need to run passwd to set the new password.

Or just use one of the old root exploits :)

Regards,
Alex






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#5 Joe Pfeiffer
July 16th, 2012 - 12:40 pm ET | Report spam
Bret Busby writes:

Hello.

I have a server that is running Firestarter on Debian 5.

I have forgotten the root password, and have not logged into root on
that computer, or updated the system, for about a year, I think.

I do remember a user login, and have successfully "ssh'd" into the
system as that user.

Is there some way that I can access the root account, and replace the
password, without having to overwrite the system via installing a new
system to replace what exists?

Thank you in anticipation.



If that user login has sudo privileges, you can

sudo -s

to get a root shell and go from there.


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