bugtraq - Dell BIOS DoS

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Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 20:08:31 -0000
From: "Ross Draper" <Ross.Draper@...icradio.com>
To: <bugtraq@...urityfocus.com>
Subject: Dell BIOS DoS

I agree with your points Jon, but lets be fair here, BIOS passwords do
have a use - especially on laptops.

Although nobody in there right mind would rely on them as the sole
protection for a machine, they are certainly worthwhile both as a
deterrant to the casual snooper and as a delaying tactic to your average
criminal.

At the very least they can buy a couple of hours for the end-user to
contact his/her IT department to block any dial-in accounts and reset
any passwords that may be compromised... assuming they remember to call
you that is ;-)

Cheers

Ross

_____________________________________________ 
From: 	jon schatz <jon@...isionbyzero.com>@RADIO  
Sent:	09 December 2003 07:38
To:	James Evans
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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