Hacking in to Red Hat, Fedora, Mandriva, Mandrake…and

other Linux systems

So far we have discussed both windows and Ubuntu hacks. In the next topic I’m going to discuss is how we can log into rest of Linux systems! (So by now you can practically accesses  most of the computers used in world J . I’m not a big fan of apple or Solaris. I haven’t used them and at the moment don’t know any method to get in to such systems. But remember no code is perfect. There should, must, and always will be a mistake done by some developer somewhere and over looked by testing teams. So I’m pretty sure there are ways to access them too. If you know such a way feel free to share it with me.)

Advantages:

1.      No extra tools necessary

2.      Highly  simple

3.      Ultra fast

4.      Gain administrator privileges

5.      Work on most of Ubuntu based systems, (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, edubuntu …)

Disadvantages:

If the boot parameter editing is disabled by the admin this will not work. (But it’s highly unlikely admin will block

Method:

This is almost identical to the Ubuntu hack discusses previously. Some time previous hack too work on other Linux systems too. But here is an alternative.

1.      Follow steps 1-3 in Ubuntu hack

2.      At the grub command prompt you will get something like “boot: ”

3.      Here type “linux single”. That’s it!!!

4.      You will get a administrator previledged shell. Follow step 11 and forward from Ubuntu hack to change the password.

Preventing:

Same as the Ubuntu hack

Theory:

If you haven’t configured boot loader properly ( grub.conf) some editing at kernel parameters can lead you to root privileges.

If you think carefully you may discover there are alternative ways to do this. But the I cant guratee this will succeed.

1.      One possible change is instead of using built in boot loader you can boot from a boot cd and use the grub on that CD.

2.      At the grub highlight  the line with “kernel” Change it in following manner by adding word single.

3.      Before:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.9-34.ELsmp ro root=/dev/sda1
now:
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.9-34.ELsmp ro root=/dev/sda1 single

4.      Press enter and ‘b’ to boot

5.      Done!