Bug 7840

Summary: when swithing to init 1, system is not protected by root password
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: Q Enterix <enterix>
Component: initscriptsAssignee: Bill Nottingham <notting>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 6.1CC: rhw, rvokal
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: i386   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 1999-12-16 17:00:16 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:

Description Q Enterix 1999-12-16 12:53:50 UTC 
When switching to init 1 (single user mode), system automaticly logs in as
root. There is no password protection at this level. This is a security
problem especially with console access and Ctrl+Alt+Del enabled: typing
"LILO: linux 1" will give full root access.
Comment 1 Bill Nottingham 1999-12-16 17:00:59 UTC 
So will, among other things, 'linux init=/bin/bash'. Without
disabling command-line arguments completely in LILO, there's
no point in making single user-mode ask for a password.
Comment 2 Riley H Williams 1999-12-17 00:15:59 UTC 
There is actually a fairly simple fix for this problem, which I have put in
every Linux installation I've done:

 1. Run the following command:

        chmod 0600 /etc/lilo.conf

 2. Put the following two lines at the top of /etc/lilo.conf (at least, in
    the global section thereof):

        password=PASSWORD
        restricted

    Replace PASSWORD with whatever password you require, in plaintext.
    Note that whitespace is NOT permitted in the password.

 3. Make sure that the default runlevel in /etc/inittab is NOT level 1.

 4. Run lilo to install those changes.

Following the above, anybody wishing to add ANY parameters to the command line
will need to type in the specified password before LILO will permit their use.
The password has to be in plaintext here for some reason, hence the requirement
to set mode 0600 on /etc/lilo.conf first.

Personally, I'd like to see this as the default in RedHat. Any chance of that?