I need to recover the Administrator passwrod on my Linux Red Hat box. I have found a way to do it (I think): when Linux is booting up, press ctrl-x to get into the command promtp mode. You are then presented with a screen like:

boot>

From here I enter single user mode and when in in single user mode I type in the command: password, and then enter in a new password.

This then allows me to boot up Linux as "root".

However, my query is, do I have full administrator access logged in this way or not because it seems like a very simple way for anyone to crack a UNIX/LINUX box? Surely it can't be this easy.
If in fact this does not give me full administrator privilieges then do you guys know any other ways to do so?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

As far as I am aware, this does allow you to change root's password easily, and so could be used to gain unwanted root access... however, in order to get into single mode, you must be at the keyboard when the thing boots up, so it would not be possible to do this from a networked machine. You can password protect your lilo/grub setup so that you need another password to boot into anything except for the default setting, for added security.

hey there Mr Neroazzurri
try this thread
this should take care of all your questions, it did mine.

grub is more secure bcz it have its own grub loader password other than the roots passowrd first u have to enter the grub password to go into the single user mode

lilo has password protection too. just as secure.