All your notebook belong to us

[Jerry Leichter]

Just about all notebooks shipped in the last 5 years or more contain a  
helpful bit of code in the BIOS that allows for remote tracing in case  
of theft.  Unfortunately, it's got serious security holes, allowing it  
to be used for much more nefarious purposes - like rootkits that  
survive disk reformatting and OS installation:

http://www.coresecurity.com/content/Deactivate-the-Rootkit

*What* are the guys producing this junk thinking?  It's all there  
supposedly "to help customers" - but I have yet to see an actual  
service offering that uses this stuff.  So right now it's all  
negatives, no positives.

                                                       -- Jerry

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