I hope this is the right area to post this question. So my roommate and friends found a way to change my administrator password on my white macbook. I had never told anyone my password. I was wondering how this could be done and possibly a way to prevent it. One of the friends said they just took the battery out to get around the password but I doubt that. I know they didn't reboot. So could I get some help to be less paranoid in the future?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
A little paranoid from friends
- Thread starter ctrunner
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
it's because you have tiger. Tiger has a security flaw allowing you to boot into single user mode and change the password of the root user. All *nix OS's have this user however it is disabled by default because it's uber powerful. I never found a way to stop this is tiger. Leopard this issue has been fixed. To stop this i think the ONLY way to stop it is to update.
They can still reboot and create a new admin account, or read the password hash and attempt to crack it. Could be a keylogger, or they could have another admin account which they have been using the reset your password.