How to break root's password?
 

Hi All,


As we know that at boot time when we see the OS selection screen we can press "e" to edit it that is Linux OS selection and enter single user mode from where we can easily break the root's password.

So, is there any other method do achieve the same result?


Thanks!

Dev.

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Hi,

For maintenance purposes you can pass the 'single' parameter to the kernel but you would still need the 'root password'.

You can use your install cd/dvd to boot your system then perform mounts that can be chroot to the correct mount that allow you to edit as desired. These methods are used to correct problems on your system yet could be malicious performed.

The LQ rules do state;

Do a LQ search on the method of chroot.

Using 'single user mode' seems to vary a bit between distributions and even their versions; earlier it was common that one could get root privileges by booting into that runlevel without any passwords asked, then some distributions started doing it so (by default) that one needed to enter root password even when booting into single-user mode, and now I again see that it works without the password. I wonder where it's all going..but if you don't set a password to your bootloader or BIOS, then I guess it's not much use to have one for single-user mode either.

All in all, if the disk is not encrypted, it's easy to break. When it is encrypted, it's just harder, not impossible. In the mean time check if other users can read files from your homedirectory; as odd as it sounds, the default policy on a lot of big distributions is to create files with permissions for others to read (but not modify) them..

Technically you could also use a live CD and just mount the HDD ... assuming the HDD is not encrypted.

I also question your motive for requesting such info. Whatever we will respond with kinda makes us accomplices to a potential crime, so I'd rather leave it as the simplest possible solutions.

This is probably more help than we should be giving on this topic.

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