[Novalug] Remote computer takeover possible?

Clif Flynt clif@cflynt.com
Mon Dec 22 19:58:33 EST 2008


On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 02:54:11PM -0500, Charles M Howe wrote:
> List,
> 
> A friend of one of my sons who lives in upper Montgomery County
> occasionally takes over my son's computer to do virus protection, etc.
> They are Windows machines, naturally. Is the same possible with Linux?
> ...

  Given that:
  1) The target computer is on the net.

  2) a) It has a routeable address.

     b) The firewall has a passthrough configured to make the
        target machine visible from the net.

  3) The firewall is configured to allow a command protocol
     to pass (telnet, SSH, VPN etc.)

  4) The remote person knows loginid and password.

  The answer is yes, a remote person can log in and do whatever they
want/need to do.  I do this frequently for my clients when I can't be
there in person.

  That's a fairly large number of constraints to open accidently, but
it can certainly happen.

  If someone has unconstrained physical access to a computer, they can
do whatever they want/need.

  A knoppix (or other live distro) will let you boot to whatever you
need to be, given that the BIOS is not configured to forbid booting
from anything but HD0.

  Even if the BIOS is configured to only allow HD0 to boot and is
password protected, and you don't have the password for the BIOS, if
you have the computer in your physical control, you can open it up,
replace HD0 with a new drive, rejumper the old (IDE) drive as a slave
and do what you want/need to do.

  If you really want to keep information private:
  
  1) Keep it off the net.
  2) Control physical access.
  
  You might be able to get by with an encrypted file system.
Given a good key and no need to take the system through customs.

  Clif

-- 
... Clif Flynt ... http://www.cwflynt.com ... clif@cflynt.com ...
.. Tcl/Tk: A Developer's Guide (2nd edition) - Morgan Kauffman ..
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