Security hole

[Paul Smith]

On 12/11/05, Antonio Olivares <olivares14031 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > I have noticed that from SLAX liveCD, one has
> > total and free access to
> > > the home partition of all Linux (Fedora) accounts
> > in the hard-disk of
> > > the computer. In this way, with a SLAX disk,
> > everyone can spy all
> > > accounts in the hard-disk. How can this be
> > prevented?
> >
> > If someone has physical access to your machine, they
> > own your machine.
> > Period.  If they can boot off a CD, they own your
> > machine.
> >
> > You can do some stuff like make it so your computer
> > won't boot off CD,
> > and then password protect the BIOS.  That comes
> > closer.  But if someone
> > can lay hands on your machine, all they need to do
> > is pop the drive and
> > they own your data.
>
> Paul,
>    Did you install LVM automatically from within
> Anaconda?  Because if you did, Slax, Knoppix, Kanotix
> or any other livecd out there can detect the
> partitions but not access them except the /boot
> partition where grub resides and you can make minor
> corrections.  I also use SLAX and have tried to view
> the partitions and it only allows me to view /boot
> partition /dev/hda1 which is mounted on /mnt/hda1.
> Kanotix see's all the partitions but is very selective
> as to allow read/write, by default the partitions are
> not mounted and one has the option to open read only
> or read/write.
>
> My guess is that you do not have LVM partitions.
> Otherwise Slax cannot access them except for boot
> partition.

Thanks, Antonio. I first need to learn what LVM partitions are to
fully understand your post, as I do not know what LVM partitions are.

Paul