Re: Dell BIOS DoS

[jon schatz <jon () divisionbyzero com>]

James Evans wrote:
> This is not an incredibly serious problem as such, since a user can go 
> back into the BIOS setup and change the password there, provided the 
> BIOS Setup is not protected with an unknown password. Or, as a last 
> resort, Dell can be phoned to provide a master backdoor password, as 
> long as the user can prove herself the legal owner of the computer. Of 
> course, the prerequisite of physical access to the machine highly 
> mitigates this vulnerability.

...and once upon a time the default backdoor dell password was "dell".

seriously, bios passwords are worthless. there are numerous ways to get 
around them. most motherboards have a jumper that you can set to reset 
your cmos / bios (probably misusing one of those terms) to the factory 
defaults. or you can just yank the cmos battery out. for your laptop, it 
might be a bit trickier, but you can usually get to the jumpers 
underneath the keyboard (at least on my old sager you could).

hth.

-jon
--
jon () divisionbyzero com || www.divisionbyzero.com
gpg key: www.divisionbyzero.com/pubkey.asc
think i have a virus? www.divisionbyzero.com/pgp.html
"You are in a twisty little maze of Sendmail rules, all confusing."