Kon-Boot Lets You Bypass Logon for Windows and Linux

Can,t wait to see the havoc when these features are added to a rootkit.

brogdrone July 08, 2009 (Article Rating: )

Hmmm - booting up using the .iso left me with a blinking cursor the first time, and a blinking "ERR" the second time, all while I received an alert my AD account was now locked out. Are we sure this thing does what it says it does?

ejhonda July 08, 2009 (Article Rating: )

Maybe it already has been added to a rootkit!!!!

swakefield2 July 08, 2009 (Article Rating: )

From my testing on a Windows XP computer which is part of a domain, you can only use a local user account, not an AD account. This is why you locked your AD account out. Try it against a local account and it should work fine. Another caveat is that you need to know the name of at least one local user account to access the system; however, there are ways to find this out before hand if you don't already know. (Ex. Offline NT Password & Registry Editor, ERD Commander)

segways July 09, 2009 (Article Rating: )

As a systems administrator with a background in software engineering, my response to this article is - quite frankly - "oh please."

It is a fact that you do not need to alter the kernel to bypass a logon - just the boot sequence, which is as easy as pie if you are a programmer.

If I'm booting an ISO CD from the console, I can bypass the security anyway. I can gain root access regardless of the operating system being used by booting from a CD, as long as I know how to read the underlying filesystem.

No special programming is even required for such a feat. That is why encrypted filesystems were created in the first place.

TJ023 July 09, 2009 (Article Rating: )

Wasn't that what Windows PE was developed for? Have they tried UBCD recently. That does exactly this, and has been doing so for many years.

Buggrit July 23, 2009 (Article Rating: )