Re:
moolideejay said:
First of all , im new to FreeBSD.
I just tested what
@sverreh said, it worked,
I even noticed that it
's possible to reset the root password in "single user mode"!
Why is that so easy to reset the root password with just a few clicks? So anyone that has physical access to your system could login to your system without any problems! Of course physical security is so important, but at home; there is no physical security at home :e
Is there a way to disable this mode?(User Single Mode)
I just come up on this very old thread bec
ause I was looking for information related to the astonishing experience I had when I found out how easy, really easy is to reset passwords under FreeBSD. I was playing with an old BSD machine in the lab and I simply started user mode to fix something and then I started playing with passwords and it was quietly incredible for me to come up to a root prompt without being asked any password and had the option to mess up with everything without any problem or control from OS side.
You just need a physical access to a machine not protected by BIOS password and you can, in few minutes, reset all the passwords using single user mode.
I hope things changed with recent ver
sions and installs of FreeBSD bec
ause it is not acceptable this behaviour in terms of security. Even Windows passwords are a lot harder to reset even if you physically have access to a machine, you need some tools, then with single user mode under FreeBSD you need nothing and, IMHO, this is a big big lack for such a secure, server OS. I read you can change the behaviour and have the OS ask for password also in single user mode, then this should be done by default for any install.
BTW, having said that, the original question of the user in this thread was related to
su error if the user does not belong to the
wheel group. This is a well done behaviour, then it is a lot more simple to add an existing and even running user to the
wheel group admitting he always have access to
sudo then what I read on this thread.
If you are in KDE you can simply open a Konsole or other terminal program and type
sudo pw group mod wheel -m your_user_name
. After this, simply type
su
to show the password prompt and you can become root.
A lot simpler compared to booting a live DVD or going into single user mode.
No one pointed about this simple and straightforward way to do this simple and easy thing.