Kon Boot. Modify the kernal and walk right in the front door.

Thanks to Patrick at Risky.biz a few weeks ago I heard about Kon Boot.

More info on Kon Boot is below, but in simplistic terms you can boot of the ISO via floppy, cd, or usb and Kon Boot will analyse the Linux or Windows kernel during the boot process. You can then simply enter with a “blank” password at the normal login process and your on as admin. Obviously this will not give you the password, it is simply a bypass mechanism, but I can certainly see how this will be handy, and could be a handly alternative to something like Ophcrack.

Obviously this will raise some concerns, so using techniques such as using a bios password, hard disk password, total drive encryption will add some hurdles in allowing this type of software to be used. That said its a great tool, and well worth experimenting with.

About Kon-Boot

Kon-Boot is an prototype piece of software which allows to change contents of a linux kernel (and now Windows kernel also!!!) on the fly (while booting). In the current compilation state it allows to log into a linux system as ‘root’ user without typing the correct password or to elevate privileges from current user to root. For Windows systems it allows to enter any password protected profile without any knowledge of the password. It was acctually started as silly project of mine, which was born from my never-ending memory problems :) Secondly it was mainly created for Ubuntu, later i have made few add-ons to cover some other linux distributions. Finally, please consider this is my first linux project so far :) Entire Kon-Boot was written in pure x86 assembly, using old grandpa-geezer TASM 4.0.

Updated – 30-6-2009. KonBoot can now Reset the Windows and Linux passwords:

No special usage instructions are required for Windows users, just boot from Kon-Boot CD/Floppy, select your profile and put any password you want. You lost your password? Now it doesnt matter at all.

Floppy Image – FD0-konboot-v1.1-2in1.zip
CD ISO Image – CD-konboot-v1.1-2in1.zip

Or read more here.

June 19, 2009 | 4 Comments »

Adobisoft? Adobe are going to release quarterly updates on the 2nd Tuesday

Over recent months Adobe have had several issues with Reader vulnerabilities, and have caused organisations no end of issues testing and deploying the updates.

Now Adobe have decided they need to take a similar approach to Microsoft and release routine updates, and they plan to do this on the 2nd Tuesday of each quarter, starting this summer.

The Adobe Reader issue sparked “a lot of conversation internally at Adobe from executives to testers and developers” and ultimately led to the permanent changes to Adobe’s software security approach, Arkin said. “Everything from our security team’s communications during an incident to our security update process to the code itself has been carefully reviewed,”

Read the Adobe and Microsoft Blogs to read more from the source.

Personally I think this is a good thing, I know we all laugh and joke about patch Tuesday, but at least its a reasonable approach to security patching, and its working, so I think Adobe have alot to gain from working with MS on this. I also think in some way it can make our job a little easier, as we can plan for the releases, or at least expect them.

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