Bugtraq mailing list archives
RE: Dell BIOS DoS
From: David Brodbeck <DavidB () mail interclean com>
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 14:06:19 -0500
-----Original Message----- From: jon schatz [mailto:jon () divisionbyzero com]
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.
Once upon a time, Sun Sparcstations stored the password in the NVRAM chip. This chip had an internal battery. If you lost the password, that was it, the only official fix was to replace the NVRAM chip. (At least it was socketed.) Even that turned out to not be a serious problem, though; it turned out if you removed the chip entirely, the system would boot to the ROM monitor. Then you could put the chip back in "hot" and clear the password. There is no such thing as security from someone who has physical access to the hardware.
Current thread:
- Dell BIOS DoS James Evans (Dec 08)
- Re: Dell BIOS DoS jon schatz (Dec 09)
- Re: Dell BIOS DoS Steve Shockley (Dec 09)
- Re: Dell BIOS DoS der Mouse (Dec 10)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- RE: Dell BIOS DoS David Brodbeck (Dec 09)
- Re: Dell BIOS DoS Craig Paterson (Dec 09)
- RE: Dell BIOS DoS Lyal Collins (Dec 10)
- Re: Dell BIOS DoS Eric Anderson (Dec 10)
- Re: Dell BIOS DoS Alexandros Papadopoulos (Dec 09)
- Re: Dell BIOS DoS Jim Paris (Dec 10)
- Re: Dell BIOS DoS Craig Paterson (Dec 09)
- Dell BIOS DoS Ross Draper (Dec 09)
- Mobile Device Security, Was: Re: Dell BIOS DoS Karsten W. Rohrbach (Dec 10)
- Re: Dell BIOS DoS Seth Arnold (Dec 10)
- Re: Dell BIOS DoS Thor (Dec 11)
- PGP secret keys (was Re: Dell BIOS DoS) Matthew Wakeling (Dec 12)
- Re: Dell BIOS DoS jon schatz (Dec 09)