Re: password backdoors

[lee () netspace org (Lee J. Silverman)]

On Thu, 11 May 1995 cmcurtin () clipper cb att com wrote:

> Once you've got this, you should be able to mount the disk that your
> password file lives on, and then edit the password file to delete the
> encypted password. Save your changes, and boot normally. Login as root,
> which will then have no password. Ta-da.

        I seem to remember that someone (who probably reads this list so
I'll feel terrible if I screw this up, but I think his name is Matt Blaze
and I *think* he works for AT&T) wrote a secure filesystem that uses NFS
on the local machine to interact with an encrypted filesystem.  I do not
remember if the encryption is done on a per-user or per partition basis,
but in any case, if you're really interested in keeping someone with
physical access to the machine from getting at your files, you could use
an encrypted filesystem.  Does anyone know if that system also does
compression? 

        As you can tell, my information is sketchy.  I'm sure someone with
more information will post and tell us where we can learn more. 


Lee Silverman     lee () netspace org      http://www.netspace.org/users/lee/
Network: Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances,
         with interstices between the intersections.  -- S. Johnson