Yes.
My company is trying to force a security product they bought for Windows onto the Linux side of the house. It's not working out very well, and it's actually lessening our security.
For context, I can give you physical access, AND THE ROOT PASSWORD, to our Linux boxes, and you still will not be able to do anything to them.
“For context, I can give you physical access, AND THE ROOT PASSWORD, to our Linux boxes, and you still will not be able to do anything to them.”
How is that? Special hardware? (What architecture?) How do *you* maintain them?
What happens if *you* lose a crucial cryptographic key, such as an FS-related key (e.g. LUKS passphrase), the Secure Boot key (if non-standard), etc.? Can you get to the UEFI menu (or equivalent) via the HW Reset button to turn off Secure Boot?
P.S. With *complete* physical access (no time limit, no interference, the ability to boot from USB, etc.) the root password is usually quite unnecessary.