🚀 go-pugleaf

[A repost from comp.security.misc. The original poster asked for help
about an IBM PC on which a person, described by hin as 'a student',
installed a protection program that locked legitimate users out. I
think the implications on attitude towards students are better
discussed here. The relevant portion of the article starts one page
down. - Olaf]

In <1992Oct14.194137.26262@news.ysu.edu> doug@cc.ysu.edu writes:

>...
>  If you boot from a floppy disk, the machine hangs.  If you boot from the
>  hard-drive, the screen clears and the word 'Password:' is displayed.
>  
>  We suspect it's some form of commercial or shareware password protection
>  that imbeds itself in the partition table or some other place where it
>  will be activated during power-on self test.
>  
>  Do you have any suggestions (besides removing the hard drives - which
>  we're considering ?)  How do we get rid of it ?

Try to remove the hard disk *logically*: go SETUP and mark the hard
disk as 'not installed' or the like. This will (should) prevent the
possibly tampered master boot record from being read. (Still, you can
try it with the disk taken out physically, this will guarantee that
the boot record gets not read ;-)

If booting from a clean floppy (write-protected vanilla distribution
DOS disk, preferrably) still doesnt't work, you have probably either
an undocumented BIOS password feature (take the battery out for at
least two hours and try again...) or the person responsible (please
read below) has inserted other (perhaps selfmade) BIOS ROMS. (If you
have physical access to a machine, you just can do ANYTHING.)
Or the hardware is broken (have you taken this into consideration?)

>  BTW, it's quite possible that the student responsible is reading this
>  forum.

Well, may he, and may he get informed from this that it is impossible
to get full security, and this holds for the intruder too.

Now: I'm trying hard not to flame, but this just makes me angry. I
think it WRONG WRONG WRONG to blame every intrusion/security
risk/breach to students in the first place. This attitude towards
students is responsible for a rather un-academic climate in many, if
not most academic installations. From your posting I see no evidence
that you have a PROOF that the person responsible is a student, unless
you have caught him already (and in this case you should know how to
deal with the broken machine too). Then you should not publicly put
the blame upon 'a student'. From the information you give, one can
conclude that the culprit is *a person with physical access to the
machine*, nothing more. (Depending on the details of your
installation, maybe not even that). In fact, it could have been
anybody. It could as well have been one of your staff people.

PLEASE stop this form of discriminatory thinking against students once
and for all. Students are NOT a security risk in the first place. This
attitude leads to an active discrimination where students are denied
all rights and privileges, if logically sound or not, for 'security
reasons'. Such actions (as locking them out) are taken when an
incident happens against ALL students, then the ONE person responsible
is caught, and the previous rights and privileges of the innocent
others are NOT restored. This is the action usually taken on such an
incident, and probably on NO ground of evidence that the culprit is
indeed a student.

There is NO REASON why you use the words 'a student' in place of 'a
person', thus judge a whole group of people before trial (against one
not necessarily of them). ABANDON this biased attitude and you will
probably improve the general climate much.

(If, in your case, you know that it was a student, then you should
explain the reason. From your posting I simply cannot see it. Sorry if
you feel offended by this posting, but since we have similar problems
here, I just thought I had to say that.)


MfG,
        Olaf
-- 
    o     Olaf Titz - comp.sc.student - univ of karlsruhe - germany
 _ /<_    s_titz@iravcl.ira.uka.de - uknf@dkauni2.bitnet - praetorius@irc
(_)>(_)   +49-721-60439 - did i forget something?
He thinks too much, such men are dangerous. - Shakespeare, Caesar