Partition security?

[Katabatic]

I was curious. If you system is hacked or somehow security is compromised from the outside, can the hacker gain access to all all of your parts of your hard drive?

For example, if i am on my Fedora partition, can the hacker get access or in any way affect my partition running Debian?

What about LiveCDs? Can you get hacked while running a LIVE CD?


Just curious as i couldnt find much info on it

[g.ivannov]

I was curious. If you system is hacked or somehow security is compromised from the outside, can the hacker gain access to all all of your parts of your hard drive?

For example, if i am on my Fedora partition, can the hacker get access or in any way affect my partition running Debian?

What about LiveCDs? Can you get hacked while running a LIVE CD?


Just curious as i couldnt find much info on it

Yes, you must protect your partitions. Here is a simplified /etc/fstab:

/etc/fstab

<filesystem> <mountpoint> <type> <options>  <backup> <fsck>

/dev/hda1  /   ext3       defaults,errors=remount-ro   0       1
/dev/hda2  /home   ext3     nodev,nosuid        0       2
/dev/hda3  none   swap     sw         0       0
/dev/hda4  /mnt/hda4      ext3   noauto,user,ro    0       0
/dev/hdb  /media/cdrom   udf,iso9660   noauto,user,exec        0       0
/dev/fd0  /media/floppy   auto   noauto,user,rw,sync      0       0

You may be attacked using a liveCD if your account is root. Use liveCD that give the option of non-privileged user like onthego (mepis) or sudo-accounts like DSL etc And if there is a firewall on the liveCD, turn it on.

[Katabatic]

Thanks for answering that question man but it was late at night when i made it. I was origionally meaning to ask if i am in, for example, a Gentoo partition, can the files on my Fedora partition effected? Is the security compromised on the other partition?

[devils casper]

a Gentoo partition, can the files on my Fedora partition effected? Is the security compromised on the other partition?

Yes. All Partitions are visible to all distros and root user of one distro can read/write files/partitions of other distros, unless you hide Partition(s) using hide command of GRUB.

[g.ivannov]

I was origionally meaning to ask if i am in, for example, a Gentoo partition, can the files on my Fedora partition effected? Is the security compromised on the other partition?

Well, I replied "Yes, you must protect your partitions", but perhaps I was not very clear ...Yes, the security on the other partition is compromised if you dont secure it.

In the scheme above you see (for example) this line:

/dev/hda4  /mnt/hda4      ext3   noauto,user,ro    0       0

This partition doesnt belong to the active distro. The options noauto,user,ro mean that it is not mounted automatically at boot time, but can be mounted by the user and it will be in read-only mode. So, a hacker cannot endamage it.

The example above was very simple. There are a lot of options for even more security but this chapter is long and you had better to google for howtos if you are interested in learning more.
You can also install the package pysdm where you will find a labyrinth of options.

[devils casper]

Editing fstab file and passing ro option wont make any difference. root user of any distro can mount any partition with read/write privileges unless its hidden.