[81689] in Cypherpunks
Re: [CNN] Stolen Laptops and lame 'solution'
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brian Lane)
Thu Jun 12 22:18:56 1997
From: nexus@eskimo.com (Brian Lane)
To: "David E. Smith" <dave@bureau42.ml.org>
Cc: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 01:36:57 GMT
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.970612074651.9609A-100000@bureau42.ml.org>
Reply-To: nexus@eskimo.com (Brian Lane)
On Thu, 12 Jun 1997 07:50:49 -0500 (CDT), you wrote:
>On Wed, 11 Jun 1997, Raymond Mereniuk wrote:
>
>> This has been discussed on this list before, about 1 year ago. The=20
>> Computrace software is installed on a place on the hard drive where=20
>> DOS utilities like Fdisk and Format can not get at it. This is the=20
>> same as Diskmanager Version 7 or higher, Fdisk and Format will not=20
>> remove this version of Diskmanager.
>
>There you go, assuming DOS is the centre of the universe again.
>I haven't seen this, but there's a pretty good chance that reformatting
>the hard disk as a Linux partition and installing LILO would clean
>that nuisance right up. (If it didn't, you could probably just
>use your favorite disk editor to find the Computrace code and zero
>it out.)
>
>OC this is all above the means of the average laptop thief, but the
>dedicated ones probably have a staff techie.
I think that a simple fdisk /mbr should take care of the problem.
The drive is booted from the master boot record. There is no way
around this without a bios change. LILO overwrites the MBR with the
LILO program to boot Linux (and other OSes on the system) so it too
would defeat their software.
Doesn't sound like too much of a solution when you're dealing with
even a slightly knowledgable thief.
Brian
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Brian C. Lane http://www.eskimo.com/~nexus =
KC7TYU
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