bugtraq - Re: Dell BIOS DoS

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Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 23:37:58 -0800
From: jon schatz <jon@...isionbyzero.com>
To: James Evans <jae7@...igh.edu>
Cc: bugtraq@...urityfocus.com
Subject: Re: Dell BIOS DoS

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
-- 
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