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Re: Mac OS X stores login/Keychain/FileVault passwords on disk



On 17/7/04 5:17 am -0700, Kurt Seifried wrote:

To quote myself:

http://www.seifried.org/lasg/system/index.html

Unfortunately if you are using Apple hardware you cannot secure the boot
process in any meaningful manner. While booting if the user holds down the
command-option-P-R keys it will wipe any settings that exist, there is no
way to avoid this.

Err, have you actually tried that?  See

 <http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106482>

and note the section which states that one of the effects of turning on "Open Firmware Password Protection" is that it "Blocks a reset of Parameter RAM (PRAM) by pressing the Command-Option-P-R key combination during startup". This has certainly been my experience here.

Your point on physical security though is well made, and it is trivial to defeat most BIOS controls if you have physical access to the device.

James
--
James Goodlet, Head of Infrastructure Services,
IT Services, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QJ
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