OS 10.5 - Macs Are Easily Hackable?!??!? Wha...?!

Petabeata89 · Petabeata89 #1 (**permalink**)

09-29-2008, 10:15 AM

So a buddy of mine (Windoze guy) came up to me the other day and said his friend forgot her password on her macbook and she is the only user with the only account. My friend was all excited because he and his friends were gonna try and hack the mac to get the pw. Lo and behold, he did it in two lines of code after pressing Command + S when the comp was starting up. What is this? I thought macs were supposed to be secure... doesn't sound like it... help me keep my faith in Macs!!!!

macgig · macgig #2 (**permalink**)

09-29-2008, 04:07 PM

single user mode. it bypasses the login... that can be prevented by password protecting the firmware. so he didn't guess the password or hack into the system. This can be a security breach in some environments which can be stopped.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1352

Dysfunction · Dysfunction #3 (**permalink**)

09-29-2008, 04:14 PM

Single user mode is pretty much standard in *nix operating systems. You can hardly call using single user mode 'hacking'. Nor do I consider it anything more than a physical security breach.

lifeafter2am · lifeafter2am #4 (**permalink**)

09-29-2008, 06:27 PM

There is an old saying in the Comp Security circles, "If someone has physical access to your computer, it's not your computer anymore".

Even if he couldn't do that, it is all to easy to boot into a bootable *nix environment and then do stuff from there.

lifeafter2am #4 (permalink)
Member Since: Aug 25, 2006 Location: Central Florida Posts: 1,395 Mac Specs: MacBook Pro Unibody	09-29-2008, 06:27 PM There is an old saying in the Comp Security circles, "If someone has physical access to your computer, it's not your computer anymore". Even if he couldn't do that, it is all to easy to boot into a bootable *nix environment and then do stuff from there. masakatsu agatsu @lifeafter2am
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OS 10.5 - Macs Are Easily Hackable?!??!? Wha...?!

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Petabeata89 #1 (permalink)
Member Since: Sep 29, 2008 Location: Oxford, Ohio Posts: 2 Mac Specs: 2.5 gHz, 4 gigs RAM	09-29-2008, 10:15 AM So a buddy of mine (Windoze guy) came up to me the other day and said his friend forgot her password on her macbook and she is the only user with the only account. My friend was all excited because he and his friends were gonna try and hack the mac to get the pw. Lo and behold, he did it in two lines of code after pressing Command + S when the comp was starting up. What is this? I thought macs were supposed to be secure... doesn't sound like it... help me keep my faith in Macs!!!!
	QUOTE Thanks

macgig #2 (permalink)
Member Since: Mar 15, 2006 Posts: 486 Mac Specs: 20" Aluminum iMac 2.0 Ghz \| 4 gigs ram \| Snow leopard	09-29-2008, 04:07 PM single user mode. it bypasses the login... that can be prevented by password protecting the firmware. so he didn't guess the password or hack into the system. This can be a security breach in some environments which can be stopped. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1352
	QUOTE Thanks

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