Date sent: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:04:06 -1000
From: Warren Wolfe <lists at databasics.us>
Organization: DataBasics
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
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Subject: Re: IBM Thinkpad 600e can't get past password prompt...
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Fred Cisin wrote:
On Thu, 18 Jun 2009, Zane H. Healy wrote:
It was my understanding that the password is
stored on a chip on the HD.
Wow.
Yeah, that would be harder to circumvent. How hard a password is it?
Does it have any time delays or trial counts that would prevent a rapid
brute furce crack?
Anything preventing swapping board from another drive with chip holding
known password?
That's the right thinking, Fred....
Warren
Not quite what it is.
The design is more secure than you think, the locked HD is locked even with board swap.
The pwd the hard drive itself checks against is stored on the platter itself. The hard
drive
board checks for presence of pwd every power cycles. If present, it's unaccessible.
This is reason the NEED to extract the password by reading the thinkpad's eeprom IC
with
PC and homemade circuit while disassembled thinkpad powered on at the password
request. When pwd is known, reassemble the thinkpad and type in password to unlock the
whole thinkpad and that will unlock the hard drive, then go into bios and clear out
password
settings to disabled.
Cheers, Wizard