Live USB – No Username/Password Required When Exploring from Live USB

live-usbpermissionsSecurity

A few months back when I buggered up my netbook and then booted into it to get information from it using a live USB. (Thinking that was 10.10)

When I was copy/pasting this to another USB at no time was I required to enter my user name or password to access this information. Why and how was that possible? Shouldn't that not be possible? This was information from the 'home' including documents, pictures, music, videos and some other locations.

This does not sound secure at all, is there any way that I can ensure this cannot happen again and that user name and password would be required to access information on my installed Ubuntu computer when booting on that computer from a live USB/CD/DVD?

Best Answer

No user name/password required when exploring from live USB

Why and how was that possible? Shouldn't that not be possible?

Well, you are using the OS (Ubuntu) from the live USB not OS from your installation

This does not sound secure at all, is there any way that I can ensure this cannot happen again and that user name and password would be required to access information on my installed Ubuntu computer when booting on that computer from a live USB

You could encrypt you data:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EncryptedFilesystems

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/System_Encryption_with_LUKS

Why Use Encryption?

In the simplest terms encryption is a method for establishing privacy.

Live USB (16.04)

Mount the USB with Ubuntu installed in it
Backup the file syslinux/syslinux.cfg. We will modify it so we need to replace it back if something goes wrong.
Open the following files under syslinux directory: syslinux.cfg and txt.cfg
Delete (or comment) everything in syslinux.cfg.

The txt.cfg file has the default GRUB menu entries. Copy the live one to syslinux.cfg:

default live
label live
menu label ^Try Ubuntu without installing
kernel /casper/vmlinuz.efi
append file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper cdrom-detect/try-usb=true persistent noprompt floppy.allowed_drive_mask=0 ignore_uuid initrd=/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash --

You can add any specific kernel parameters needed for your device in the append line.
Save isolinux.cfg and boot your system using the USB. It will boot straight to the desktop now.

Live USB (13.10)

Mount the USB with Ubuntu installed in it
Backup the file isolinux/isolinux.cfg. We will modify it so we need to replace it back if something goes wrong.
Open the following files under isolinux directory: isolinux.cfg and txt.cfg
Delete everything in isolinux.cfg.

The txt.cfg file has the default GRUB menu entries. Copy the live one to isolinux.cfg:

default live
label live
menu label ^Try Ubuntu without installing
kernel /casper/vmlinuz.efi
append file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper cdrom-detect/try-usb=true persistent noprompt floppy.allowed_drive_mask=0 ignore_uuid initrd=/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash --

You can add any specific kernel parameters needed for your device in the append line.
Save isolinux.cfg and boot your system using the USB. It will boot straight to the desktop now.

[source]

Live USB (11.04)

Go to the root folder of your Live USB
Enter the syslinux directory
Make the syslinux.cfg file writeable

Replace the contents of the file syslinux.cfg with:

default live
label live
  say Booting an Ubuntu Live session...
  kernel /casper/vmlinuz
  append  file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash noprompt --

Optional: localize the system (see below)

Live CD

If you've a Live CD in your CD drive, mount it. Otherwise, if you've an ISO file available, mount it on /media/cdrom by running the next command in a terminal (replace the name of the .iso file accordingly):
```
sudo mount -o loop,ro ubuntu-11.04-desktop-amd64.iso /media/cdrom
```
Create a temporary directory in which the CD contents can be stored, say ~/live-cd (mkdir ~/live-cd)
Copy the contents of the CD to the folder ~/live-cd/iso (cp -r /media/cdrom ~/live-cd/iso)
Since the Live CD is not needed anymore, it can be unmounted (sudo umount /media/cdrom)
Open the ~/live-cd/iso folder (cd ~/live-cd/iso)
Enter the isolinux directory (cd isolinux)
Make the isolinux.cfg file writable (chmod u+w isolinux.cfg)

Replace the contents of the file isolinux.cfg with:

default live
label live
  say Booting an Ubuntu Live session...
  kernel /casper/vmlinuz
  append  file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash --

Optional: localize the system (see below)

Open a terminal and run:

cd ~/live-cd
chmod u+w iso/isolinux/isolinux.bin
mkisofs -r -V "Ubuntu Live session" -cache-inodes -J -l -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -o ubuntu-11.04-live-amd64.iso iso

The new iso will be available at ~/live-cd/ubuntu-11.04-live-amd64.iso. To save space, the ~/live-cd/iso directory can be removed. (rm -rf ~/live-cd/iso)
Now burn the ubuntu-11.04-live-amd64.iso file on a CD if needed.

Localize Ubuntu (translations)

If you want the system in the languages English, Spanish, Portuguese, Xhosa or Simplified Chinese, you've just to add the locale= boot option with en, es, pt, xh or zh to the append line as in:

... quiet splash locale=pt --

Otherwise, if you do not want to modify the file containing the root file system (filesystem.squashfs) and do not mind hacking around, continue reading.

Open a terminal and navigate to the ~/live-cd/iso directory and put the code from http://pastebin.com/VTdt9WFZ in a file (name it install-locale) and run it.

This script mounts the filesystem.squashfs, retrieves version information of the language packs from it, downloads the packages and put those in the directory locale-hack. Next, a script is created that installs the language packages on boot time. To make that work, the script also modifies the syslinux.cfg or isolinux.cfg file to apply these changes.

You'll be asked for a locale, enter something like nl or de. The script is not that clever to understand things like Dutch or German. Afterwards, the file can be removed

The terminal commands that should be executed:

cd ~/live-cd/iso
wget http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=VTdt9WFZ -O install-locale
bash install-locale
rm install-locale

Note that adding language pack can cause the generated .iso file to be bigger than 700MB which won't fit on a CD. For virtual machines however, it suffices. This hack has as a side-effect that Plymouth does not work (i.e. you do not get a fancy boot screen), but at least the system is translated when logging in. Otherwise, you had to install language-pack-gnome-* manually.

References

Ubuntu – How to access files in Windows partition from Ubuntu live USB

You need to mount the partition that contains you files. Run this on Terminal:

sudo fdisk -l

It should be something like

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048      206847      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2          206848   209717247   104755200    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

To locate which partition has your files, probably the one Windows 7 is installed in, then perform the following command:

sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdaX /~/choose-a-folder-name-you-want

Where X is the number of the partition you want to mount, like /dev/sda1 or /dev/sda2.

It should mount the disk with full access, so you can copy and paste files to those folders. More about mount.

Remember, it will mount your whole Windows 7 partition to a folder, so be carefull not to delete anything important.