On Tue, 2007-03-13 at 09:07 +0000, Mark Ridley wrote:
That's almost impoosible to do I think, if someone has physical access to your hardware, you're already in trouble. Password protected bootladers are easily bypassed, and passing certain variables to the kernel at boot time make gaining root a trivial task, not mentioning someone just stealing your disks! :)
Agreed if you have physical access it is possible to break into pretty much any system, however it's all about closing off possible attack vectors. The tricks you mention are more intrusive and may be picked up by monitoring systems etc. Things like password protected bootloaders are just speedbumps to slow down an attacker or increase their chances of being detected.
It's a bit like locking a car door, it is trivial for a thief to break a side window but doing so it more likely to get them noticed, therefore it is worthwhile even though on it's own it only offers a tiny barrier to someone attempting to break in.