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Security concerns
Authored by: randydarden on Apr 02, '02 01:06:54PM

Mention of Firewire Target Disk mode raises some serious security issues, especially for laptop users. If your machine was stolen, even if you had no OS 9 installed, someone could get to all your files by connecting it to another Mac via Firewire Target Disk mode.

Apple KBase doc #106482 discusses Open Firmware Password protection and how this can close this security hole (among others). http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106482

Still, someone could always remove the harddrive and place it in another laptop (or an external firewire case) and get to everything. Start looking at GPG.



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Security concerns
Authored by: rebug on Apr 02, '02 04:28:44PM

Physical access always equals root access. Firewire Target Disk Mode just makes it marginally easier.



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physical access
Authored by: Moo0 on Apr 03, '02 05:09:21AM

is indeed the word here. If the laptop is running X, it's quite easy to run it in single-user mode (root) and have access to just about anything.

The fact that one can copy 5 gb of data in 10 minutes makes it EASIER for sure; which just proofs the point to never leave your laptop out of sight - not even for 10 minutes...



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