If you don’t want any one to access your system without permission, you should confirm that you don’t have recovery mode enabled in GRUB boot loader or it must be password protected. Otherwise any one can get into root console as and change the password to own the box.
Here is how you add password to your GRUB prompt.
Login as root
Enter grub mode:
# grub
GNU GRUB version 0.97 (640K lower / 3072K upper memory)
[ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB
lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible
completions of a device/filename.]grub> md5crypt
Password: *******
Encrypted: $1$qzPkq$JweRsHEWARCohfzla/hWJ.grub>
Copy down encrypted password:
$1$qzPkq$JweRsHEWARCohfzla/hWJ.
Exit grub mode:
grub> quit
Modify file /boot/grub/menu.lst:
gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
Insert encrypted password in between “splashimage…” and “title…”:
#A splash image for the menu
splashimage=(hd0,4)/boot/grub/splashimages/Mac4Lin_1.0_GRUB1.xpm.gz
password –md5 $1$qzPkq$JweRsHEWARCohfzla/hWJ.
Save edited file
You can go ahead and make this file readable only by root by changing the permissions. Once this is done, reboot the system and try to edit the GRUB entries to see password prompt.
