[SPARCbook] passwd cracking

[Ian Spray]

On 08-Nov-00 Ken Hansen wrote:
> So what exactly does a boot password protect on a sparcbook - is it like
> a Openboot PROM pasword - I have no exp. using these on sparcs in
> general)?
>
The boot password stops access to general OBP commands - it forces the user
to either continue a paused session (Stop-A from Solaris) or boot with all
of the stored parameters, which prevents anyone from booting into single
user mode.
 
> Will he be able to read the device in another machine? (Critcal apps are
> on the existing drive, and they do not have a copy of OS to re-install,
> IIRC)
> 
As long as the partitions can be read from the O/S of the new machine, then
data is easy to read - just mount it.  If it's plain Solaris 8, then just
mount it - if the partition was created with CIFS or some other encrypted
format, then you'll still need to know the password for the encrypted slice.

> IF after reading the drive in another machine, can they somehow reset the
> password protection?
> 
Not the OBP protection, as that's stored in the NVRAM of the machine.

> Or, are we simply talking about a root password/user password issue? I am
> confused now...
> 
Confused, I hope :)  I was assuming that the original poster simply
couldn't log into the system due to the lack of a Solaris password, which
again could have been got around with a Tadpole CD boot, but alas, the
standard Sun CD doesn't recognise the S3000 name, and so doesn't load the
IDE drivers required to access the internal drive.


HTH,

-- 
Ian Spray          :  Software Engineer     :  Tadpole-RDI
iws at tadpole.co.uk  :  +44 (0) 1223 428 224  :  http://www.tadpole.com/