Partion 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

[stevea]

Yes - if you are hacked, the cracker may have access to all of the connected & running hardware including all disks. Yes it's unlikely but possible to be attacked using a live CD.

[SlowJet]

The iptables and ipsec filtering, deney/allow setting and all things protecting the flow of data in and out of the network can not be taken lightly.
But once inside these features provide security never available on a PC desktop before.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Security/Features

I will also add that with LVM, one big partition for a PV is visible as a partition from tools where as the whole disk PV can not be seen by older tools. You can decide when that is a security feature or an easier target. I've read both sides.

And nothing beats a an extra router / firewall / gateway before the network segment.
And the proxy, caching severs can limit identity.

SJ

[Katabatic]

I am sorry, it was a bit late and I wasnt clear with my question. I meant if I have, for example, a Fedora partition and a Knoppix partition. If i am logged into the Fedora partition, can they access anything from the Knoppix partition?

[SlowJet]

If the Knoppix partition is not mounted and they are not in root, no.
If a "They" gets root it can do anything.
Can a "They" get root?
Very unlikely if you turn on and setup all those security features (many are setup and running on first boot in Fedora.)

But next to NOT being on the net, a single OS on a computer is the safest (with no floppy, usb, pcmcia, or other i/o devices.

Security level is at the least secure system on the multi- booted computer.


SJ

[bodhi.zazen]

Have you considered encryption ?