Password/Encryption Help - PAID

[pulseit]

Hi Guys.

Im an IT tech on the Wirral (North West UK) and have a client with a big problem.

They have a home server (Fedora) which when you turn it on it asks for a password. It may also have encryption on it, we dont know.

The owner of the computer has died suddenly and the wife wants all the data. Nothing of value but a life time of photos and his personal journal.

I know nothing about this system at all, Im a Microsoft tech sorry
She is happy to pay anyone capable of going in and recovering the data, or if not local I am happy to pay anyone directly to provide phone/email instructions to me.

A death cert is available for any genuine engineer who wishes to confirm this is a genuine case.

Thanks in advance.

[secipolla]

I'm no IT person, just saying that the password may be for GRUB (the boot loader menu where different OS's are chosen) or if it starts booting Fedora and then asks for a password then it's because it has an encrypted partition.

Just to get an idea so you now better what to search for.

[pulseit]

Thanks for the quick reply. Im not onsite anymore and sadly didnt take a picture of the screen. But it was a plain blue screen with no text on it and just a box for the password. There may have been a blue circle next to it but I cant be sure.

Ive been google image searching for an example but no joy yet.

[secipolla]

It might have been just the login screen?
Then a simple live-CD is enough to access everything.

I advise you to post at http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/
It's a big forum and your issue probably ain't something specific to Fedora.

[stevea]

As Secipolla says it may just be the grub password or system password. You can bypass that by booting a live linux CD.

Since this is Fedora there is a high probability the file systems are LVM (logical volume manager) based and most live Linux CD or DVDs won't handle these. So I suggest you burn a live Fedora CD like these ...
http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora
and boot it and see if is sees the file systems and files. You really need a Linux person onsite or else get into the details yourself.

best wishes.

[pulseit]

Thanks both of you for offering support.

I'll try it with a fedora live CD on Wednesday and report back.

Thanks again

[Gareth Jones]

There are several things that could want a password:
1) BIOS;
2) The boot-loader (probably GRUB);
3) Disk encryption;
4) User login.

A live CD will get you past (2) and (4). (1) can usually be solved if you're willing to open the box. If (3), unfortunately there is pretty much nothing that can be done unless the password can be guessed.

[pulseit]

Thanks for the info.

I have been out to the customer again with a Fedora livedisc and it appears to be the encryption password its asking for. All drives/partitions are encrypted by the looks of things. Does anyone know of a company who specialises in this kind of thing?

Thanks again!

[Gareth Jones]

Originally Posted by pulseit

All drives/partitions are encrypted by the looks of things. Does anyone know of a company who specialises in this kind of thing?

If it was competently encrypted, even MI5/6/FBI/CIA/... would have difficulty. You need the password, or a computer fast enough to brute-force or dictionary it (i.e. a massive super-computer and several months!). Even weaker no-longer-considered-secure encryption algorithms are largely beyond domestic breakability.

The only realistic hope is if she can find any clues to the password, or he may have written it down somewhere. Did he make any back-ups?

[secipolla]

As said, if it's encrypted then only with the password.
If it has LVM (even if not encrypted) I think the file manager doesn't show the files so you may want to look at that (if it's not encrypted).
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/...de/ch-lvm.html
http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2010/05/27...-on-fedora-13/
are some LVM guides but I didn't look if they show how to visualize files in an LVM with a live-CD.