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Rebooted by Hileeq's channel, dedicated to fixing cheap eBay finds, documents the process and what he learned while fixing the laptops. Three weeks ago, he posted a video explaining how to bypass locked Lenovo ThinkPads with Intel 4th- to 8th-generation CPUs using a cheap CH431A programmer to read, write, erase, and save EEPROM and SPI flash memory.
Companies often add supervisor passwords to the fleet of ThinkPads they hand out to their employees as an IT security measure. When these ThinkPads are disposed of, often with the storage removed and destroyed, it’s rare that the supervisor passwords are included and documented. These locked ThinkPads are then incredibly cheap because of the lack of access, ending up as e-waste most of the time. However, Victor Voinea shared a post in a Romanian forum containing his ThinkPad supervisor removal exploits.
Unfortunately, Voinea’s method generated a random password every time the exploit was run, requiring users to contact Voinea for the key specific to the generated hardware ID — and getting the password wasn’t free. However, in 2020, Knucklegrumble posted a free way to bypass the password in the Badcaps electronics repair forum. Mark Juvan, an Ethical Hacker, reverse-engineered Knucklegrumble’s exploit as his cybersecurity master’s thesis at Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands, which goes into deeper detail.
Watch On The exploit begins by extracting the BIOS from the EEPROM chip on the motherboard using the CH341A programmer and plugging it into a USB port of another PC or laptop. Hileeq then uses NeoProgrammer, a utility for CH341A programmers, and dumps the BIOS, saving a copy of it on the other laptop. NeoProgrammer then applies the same auto-patching workflow Knucklegrumble created.
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Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/usd10-programmer-saves-bios-locked-lenovo-thinkpads-from-the-dump-exploit-bypasses-supervisor-passwords-to-save-4th-to-8th-gen-intel-models-from-e-waste#main
- https://futureplc.com/privacy-policy/
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Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.