Re: OT: An odd question that has arrisen within my household

[Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu]

On Sun, 12 Oct 2003 23:55:53 EDT, Robert W Vawter III <bob () vawter org>  said:

> Knoppix ( http://knopper.net/knoppix/ ), a bootable CD containing a live
> Linux system, contains Nessus( http://www.nessus.org/ ), a security
> analysis tool. Is the possession of a Knoppix CD at someone else's place
> of business useful, or dangerous? Is the "utility versus potential
> danger" of such tools relevant to this discussion?

1) It depends on why you're carrying the disk with you. If I'm working, and not
in my office, and not in my own machine room, something has happened that will
quite likely need a Knoppix disk or similar, so I have one handy. My showing up
*without* bootable media would be as unusual as a country doctor showing up for
a house call without his black bag. On the other hand, if I was carrying one
around while wandering through the office cubicles at my local bank, that would be
*highly* suspicious.  Intent and context are key factors.

2) By the same token, the CD by itself is harmless.  The possibility that a
visitor might be carrying such a thing on their person is the sort of reason
why said visitors shouldn't be allowed unsupervised access to one of your
machines.

A truly malicious type doesn't even need a Knoppix CD - I've personally managed
to break into systems in under 5 minutes armed with nothing but a nail
clipper(*)..

Remember, "who" and "why" matter a lot more than "what".

(*) A co-worker knew I'd surplused a ancient Decstation the previous week, and
had another that needed the disks wiped for surplusing, but the box had a
firmware password to be worked around.  That little part intended for cleaning
nails will double as a phillips head screwdriver and a tool to pop the NVRAM
out of the socket to reset the password if you're not too picky about how it
looks - and hell, we were getting ready to throw the damned thing out anyhow.
So it was only a matter of popping out 3 screws and then one IC.  Trivial, once
you know which IC you're going after.  As I said.. Who and Why are more
important than What.

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