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How to Break Into a Computer (And Prevent It from Happening to You)

Sometimes you need to get into a computer without knowing the password. Perhaps you've forgotten yours, or perhaps you're up to no good. Either way, it's actually pretty easy to do, provided your victim hasn't taken the necessary precautions. Click one of the links below to find out how to do it on either a Windows PC or a Mac, and how to prevent others from doing the same to you.

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OCT 27, 2011 7:30 PM

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walilkoa and of course we ALL know how to break into a linux box... (edit the boot line in grub and add 'S' to the end of the line)

Fri 28 Oct 2011 8:55 AM

if that doesnt work (as it probably wont because your target computer is running ubuntu) then add 'init=/bin/bash' to that S and then mount /proc, remount root as rw, and have a day. and if THAT doesnt work then theres always the livecd. thanks for that useful info gawker :)
Edited by walilkoa at 10/28/11 8:53 AM promoted by meatbag

cowboybebopfan @walilkoa I found that its was way to easy to break a Linux password if the user didn't say remove root user. Its been a while so I'm kind of fuzzy. Obi-Haiv @cowboybebopfan You probably just need a shave. meatbag @walilkoa i prefer just booting to a flash drive with something like DSL installed and mounting the HDD as a partition. your files are now my files, thanks. reffu @meatbag You can even make changes to the system (like change the root password) with the chroot command
promoted by meatbag

meatbag @reffu true true. But booting to a USB OS works on any installed OS so long as its not encrypted. reffu @meatbag My method implies using a USB or live CD OS. Chroot would just allow you to make changes to the system itself without manually editing a million files. Though I guess we just have different ideas of hacking in this case. I intended it to be break in and change stuff for fun, while you seem to mean break in and steal stuff. Neither of which is necessarily good though.

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seem to mean break in and steal stuff. Neither of which is necessarily good though.

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