full-disclosure - Breaking LoJack for Laptops

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Date: Tue May 16 14:36:28 2006
From: michael.holstein at csuohio.edu (Michael Holstein)
Subject: Breaking LoJack for Laptops

Why can't you just download a new BIOS image from the manufacturer (one 
without LoJack .. since they make seperate images with and without that 
code, for "consumers" .. and re-flash it.

Not having a "lojack" laptop at my disposal, I can't test directly, but 
having hacked the BIOS in many other cases to enable things like RAID on 
a non-raid motherboard, I suspect that the LoJack code is in one of the 
"vendor" areas on the bios, and is easily removed and the image 
re-checksummed.

Thoughts?

Michael Holstein CISSP GCIA
Cleveland State University

Jay Nevins wrote:
> FYI-
>  
> I know this may be a little after-the-fact but I just came upon your 
> article posted on 12-24-05 about how to disable LoJack for Laptops.  I 
> currently use this product and have tested it in depth for a while.  The 
> Notebook I use has Computrace built in to the BIOS.  I have tried to 
> disable rpcnet, ctmweb, rpcnetp, and other files associated with Lojack 
> as well as blocking these files with my firewall and even blocking 
> Computrace's IP.  Needless to say my notebook still manages to call 
> out.  If you are still interested in this program you may want to look 
> at machines with Computrace enabled BIOS first.
>  
> -Jay
> 
> 
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