[12159] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
TCPA-defeating BIOS switcher
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Peter Gutmann)
Fri Dec 13 10:17:40 2002
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 22:20:09 +1300
From: pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
To: cryptography@wasabisystems.com
There's a neat device called the BIOS Saviour which I first saw on the
eksitdata site, http://www.eksitdata.com/, but which has now had a few reviews
on English-language sites, e.g.
http://www.alltechbox.com/reviews/ioss_rd1_bios_savior_eng.php3 and
http://www.ascully.com/modules.php?name=Reviews&rop=showcontent&id=178. It
consists of a mezzanine board that fits underneath your existing BIOS chip and
contains a second BIOS chip that can replace the existing one. You can switch
between the two via a switch mounted on a blank plate in an expansion slot.
The intended use is to protect against bad flashes or virii (other uses are
for hot-chipping motherboards with hacked overclocking-enabled BIOSes if the
existing BIOS doesn't support it), but it could also be quite useful to swap
out a TCPA-crippled BIOS for an unencumbered one . Really adventurous modders
could set it up to boot into the TCPA BIOS as far as is necessary, halt the
CPU via a small processor sitting on the SMB, swap in the non-TCPA BIOS, and
continue.
Peter.
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