installed linux magazine dvd knoppix 7 - a newbie questions: thanks

[sam-c]

- Is it OK that knoppix 7 seems to automaticaly login to user knoppix without a password!? is this secure? I have many partitions of different Distros on same Desktop!
Thanks
Uncle Sam

[Werner P. Schulz]

Per default Knoppix doesn't offer any services, therefore it doesn't matter that user knoppix is without any password.

Knoppix is designed as a Live CD/DVD and not as a distribution to install on your computer for productive work. If you do it all the same, you have to take care for security by yourself. You have to disable "sudo" for user knoppix, you need a very good password for root, you need security updates. If you want to offer services like openssh-server or apache-server you have to read all about it and you have to configure this services as safely as possible.

[sam-c]

I suppose in Future I will use knoppix as live CD/DVD only
Thanks
Sam

[Capricorny]

I'll only speak for myself:

I use almost exclusively Knoppix.
If you install to a master USB stick, setup that as wanted/needed, and regularly start Knoppix with a fresh copy of the master knoppix-data.img, you should have a good start.
Next, avoid any automounting, and mount partitions readonly as default. Write to them only when necessary.
Use new releases of Knoppix, and keep important components like Java and browser updated.
Be careful about auto-starting any services. Logging traffic may also be useful.

Used this way, I don't consider Knoppix very insecure.

[Blacksimon]

knoppix offers an excellent service for the protection of personal data. Using persistent data encrypted with AES, I think it can be an adequate level of protection

To further increase the level of security, Inside knoppix-data.aes can have one or more extra encrypted aes images, protected by a different password, to store your really sensitive data (bank accounts, credit card code, xxx pics, private pgp key ....)
a simple script allows you to mount or unmount these data store

Note: The password can not be longer than 14 char.