root pwd Post: 51174

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Operating Systems HP-UX root pwd Post 51174 by Jerry on Wednesday 12th of May 2004 03:39:28 PM

05-12-2004

Registered User

Your question is essentially how can you act as root without knowing root's password - that's the only way you can change root's password without being logged in as root or having su privileges (which I assume you do not).

The answer is that there is no legitimate way to do that. Unix security is designed to prevent that from happening.

It may be that you could identify an exploit on your computer which would allow you to gain root privileges from a non-root account. But in doing so you run the risk of damaging either the run state or file system of your computer. Many hacks are detected because they break something on the computer.

To avoid a situation like this in the future you could create an administrative account with a UID of 0 on your computers and have a manager keep the password locked away. The risk with these types of accounts is that since no one normally uses them, if they get compromised it is unlikely you'll notice until something else breaks. But they do give you an alternative path into the computer.

I suspect that you're out of luck this time. As the other posters point out, you'll have to boot into single user mode to fix this.

Jerry

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dialups

dialups(4)							   File Formats 							dialups(4)

NAME

       dialups - list of terminal devices requiring a dial-up password

SYNOPSIS

       /etc/dialups

DESCRIPTION

       dialups	is  an	ASCII file which contains a list of terminal devices  that require a dial-up password. A dial-up password is an additional
       password required of users who access the computer through a modem or dial-up port.  The correct password must be entered before  the  user
       is granted access to the computer. The set of ports that require a dial-up password are	listed in the dialups file.

       Each entry in the dialups file is a single line of the form:

	      terminal-device

       where

       terminal-device	       The  full  path	name  of the terminal device that will require a dial-up password for users accessing the computer
			       through a modem or dial-up port.

       The dialups file should be owned by the root user and the root group.  The file should have read and write permissions for the owner (root)
       only.

EXAMPLES

       Example 1: A sample dialups file.

       Here is a sample dialups file:

       /dev/term/a
       /dev/term/b
       /dev/term/c

FILES

       /etc/d_passwd	       dial-up password file

       /etc/dialups	       list of dial-up ports requiring dial-up passwords

SEE ALSO

       d_passwd(4)

SunOS 5.10							    4 May 1994								dialups(4)

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