SunOS 2.4 Expliot (Re: Old Sparcstations

[Jeffrey S. Worley]

The Sparcstation 4/330 I reworked the NVRAM chip on....

I got it as-is from Computer Parts Barn in Asheville, NC.  It was just
round the corner from my home in Oakley..

The machine wouldn't start due to NVRAM, which I fixed.  It then
actually booted from the original drives, had an OS and data on it.  My
curiosity was piqued.  This is what I did:

I hung the drive on my PC running Linux (suse, iirc), and ran John the
Ripper on it.  I didn't get the root, but I got a user password.

I hung the drive back on the Sparcstation and logged in as that user. 
The machine was being used to model the exhaust from various
configurations of rocket nozzles.  The previous owner turned out to be
NASA at the Marshal Space Flight Center.

I wanted root.

I set out to abuse the OS, did quite a bit, had a hunch based on the
experience while sussing the NVRAM problem.  I set the date to 1970,
booted, and logged in as the valid user I'd got from good old John.

The machine bombed to a single user prompt with a kernel panic
'irrational date'.  Passwd worked to change the root pw to something I
knew.  I went back into the monitor cli, changed the date to the real
date, booted and logged in as root.

The version of Sunos was 2.4?

Just thought this might be helpful to someone.

Jeff