Can`t Boot From CD

Wow -- just wow. Websites and people have been focusing their rants and raves concerning security on obscure QuickTime exploits and Safari vulnerabilities, and all along this gem of a hack existed.

This is one piece of knowledge that is being committed to memory. I had no clue this existed before, and now that I do, it's a procedure I won't forget. I'd love to go over to a buddy's house and bet him $100 I can gain administrator access to his machine using keyboard and mouse only -- no software, no booting from a CD/DVD, no external disks, no knowledge of account passwords, no nothing -- just the existing installation of Mac OS X and the mouse and keyboard. If he has an open-firmware password, I'd have to open the machine to bypass that, but barring that scenario, it would be and easy $100... how do you Americans say? Piece of pie? ;)

Thanks for the link, Clivey. I love learning about gems like this. Hell, even I would have put a check in the Setup Assistant to see if there were already a pre-existing admin account on the machine, but apparently the Apple engineers missed the boat on that one -- I'd even consider it a bug worth reporting.
 
Pleasure dear boy, UNIX is a powerful thing - something new/difficult everyday :).
My PC colleagues point at this sort of stuff and say 'inherently insecure'. They're right.
Then again, if you suffer the same type of cockup on a PC - you HAVE to reinstall...
Good/Bad? Depends how you look at it. Certainly if I had a load of very sensitive data on my Mac, I'd literally nail it to the desk.
ATB, enjoy the Christmas break - if that's your thing.
 
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