How to reset root password in Kali Linux?

Hey guys Aditya here, and back again with another post. So, I’ve been getting a lot of questions regarding how to reset a Linux root password over the last few months, and also the last few years. if I come to think of it, and I haven’t actually covered this I usually reply to these emails directly. So, I thought why not I know to write a post, and cover this topic.

So, there are so many questions. I’m going to make regarding the question-
1. You’re running the VM.
2. Your bootloader is locked.
3. You’re running grub as you know it is the default that comes with distributions like Kali Linux.

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How to reset root password in kali linux?

This post is not exclusive to Kali Linux if you’re running any Linux distributions with the Grub bootloader, and the bootloader is not lockdown.
any way then this should work for you. So, if you’ve forgotten your root password. it’s very simple to reset it.

Disclaimer! This Post does not Promote or encourage Any illegal activities, all contents provided by This Website is meant for EDUCATIONAL PURPOSE only.

Now, in my case, I’ve just randomized or selected by random password, and set it as my root password here, and now let’s just assume, I forgot it.

STEP1: First of all, I’m just gonna shut down my system, and we’ll shut that down and I’m running VirtualBox.

STEP2: Now, start the Linux operating system, and I’m going to specify my boot options within grub bootloader. So, that’s very simple.

STEP3: Now, just click on Advanced Options, and on a click on the Latest kernel. So, I have the latest kernel which is 5.6.0, and that is the Kali Linux kernel, and also to specify the options you have to actually customize the configuration.

STEP4: After that, press the e key on your keyboard, and we want to go all the way down to where the kernel selection and the kernel selection is right over. you can see it references the VM Linux a file which is the actual Kernel.

STEP5: The kernel that’s active, and we want to go to the init options. So, in this case, we have a few init options. let me just call the way to the end here. So, looks like we have some init scripts and we also have the splash screen.

STEP6: That is brought up but the key thing here is the filesystem and the permission. So, we want to change to a read and write.

STEP7: We’re going to give it. read and write permissions, and then instead of initializing in me anything like the splash screen. we’re just going to initialize the shell session or in this case a bash session.

To write the command and hit the enter button.

rw init=/bin/bash

STEP8: Now, Boot the Linux kernel, and then instead of starting up anything is just going to give us a bash or a terminal session, and we’re going to have read and write privileges. So, to put this configuration up.

STEP9: After that, press f10 key thing to take into consideration is not going to save this configuration. So, once you reboot your system grabble. we will of course use the default configuration, and not this configuration so to put this we just hit f10, and that’s going to give us a terminal session with root access or root privileges.

STEP10: There we also get a terminal session with bash but we don’t have any job control. So, that’s perfectly fine it’s all we need to do now is type in the password, and we specify the root user or any user for that matter and hit enter and it’s going to ask us to specify a new password.

STEP11: Now, enter the password, and there is gonna say password updated successfully. After that reboot the system.

Now reboot, and we’re just gonna start that up now with the default options. So. there we are that started up Kali and specified the root user and the password.

You can see able to login successfully. So that’ll work for any use on the system, and that’s primarily because again we were able to specify the configuration with grub.

So, like this again you know just shows you this is one of these security risks with on-premises servers and other Linux workstations. that don’t have their bootloader locked down, it’s very easy to actually bypass. you don’t know any login and just reset the root password.

So, that’s something you want to keep into if you want to keep in mind when securing your Linux operating system or service.

LAST WORD:

That’s it. So, friends, this is the end of the article, So, In this post, I covered “How to reset root password in Kali Linux?”. If you face some problem in any steps please drop your email by going to contact us section of this site. If you like this post please don’t forget to share it with friends also please socialize it.

How to reset root password in kali linux?

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