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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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