Wetwork Posted September 27, 2009 Share Posted September 27, 2009 Saw this on Hack-a-day this morning regarding a so called unhackable netbook http://hackaday.com/2009/09/27/unhackable-...en-to-students/ IMHO there is no such thing as un-hackable anything but does anyone have any experience or an idea of what they are using to lock down the netbooks? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rkiver Posted September 27, 2009 Share Posted September 27, 2009 It's a great piece of marketing. Think about how many people will try and get their hands on one just to prove them wrong. :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlit Posted September 27, 2009 Share Posted September 27, 2009 Rule 1: Never, EVER, call anything "unhackable", "hack-proof", "hacker-safe" or "secure". Someone, somewhere, will break it, and if they don't, you can guarantee thousands will be trying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted September 27, 2009 Share Posted September 27, 2009 Rule 1: Never, EVER, call anything "unhackable", "hack-proof", "hacker-safe" or "secure". Someone, somewhere, will break it, and if they don't, you can guarantee thousands will be trying. Particularly if some one literally advertises it as 'hacker safe', any one could walk up with an axe and hack it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digininja Posted September 27, 2009 Share Posted September 27, 2009 Melt it with thermite, enclose in concrete block and bury in the back garden and you come close to unhackable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArkNinja Posted September 27, 2009 Share Posted September 27, 2009 They're saying its un-hackable because it has BIOS level security and a built in RFID chip. Flashing the BIOS and taking out the RFID would solve those problems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zimmer Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 Secure I would say is an ok term, but really all security does it slow you down, YES all security is just a huge road bump (AES is a 'until the end of the universe' road bump (until Quantum Crypto then is is a 5 second road bump). So nothing is unhackable just got to have the time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beakmyn Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 Melt it with thermite, enclose in concrete block and bury in the back garden and you come close to unhackable. Nah, concrete is porous so given time nature will hack it back to it's elements. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wetwork Posted September 28, 2009 Author Share Posted September 28, 2009 Melt it with thermite, enclose in concrete block and bury in the back garden and you come close to unhackable. i prefer the adamantium route myself, if it works for wolverine it works for me On a serious route i was more wondering what tools besides the passive RFID that they were using to so called lock down the netbooks? was wondering if some of our aussie friends of Hak5 has gotten a hold of one of these 20,000 netbooks so we can take a peek? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barry99705 Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 i prefer the adamantium route myself, if it works for wolverine it works for me On a serious route i was more wondering what tools besides the passive RFID that they were using to so called lock down the netbooks? was wondering if some of our aussie friends of Hak5 has gotten a hold of one of these 20,000 netbooks so we can take a peek? From reading the article on the AUS site, it looks like the standard TPM stuff you see in the Dell laptops. That, with a bios password, and an always on internet connection could keep folks from screwing with it too much. With the tpm module activated you can't flash the bios without the password, same with the drive, it won't work without the same password. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Netshroud Posted September 29, 2009 Share Posted September 29, 2009 It is not "unhackable" as in "cannot be hacked." It is "unhackable" as in "students cannot play games, install their own OS, get into it as administrator, boot linux, etc.". (My school is getting the wireless rollout this week, with netbooks soon to follow.) From what our school's TSO said, the netbooks have 2 BIOS's. If one is modified, it is overwritten with the other one, so you cannot change the setting or flash it. They have call-home, and are tied into one of the most complicated and secure systems I have seen in ages. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Sorrow Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 Schools employing "unhackable" Wifi and netbooks make me laugh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NUSHOR Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 just schools trying to do anything "unhackable" in general is a joke. My school got taken down by virut last year, well a more evolved version of it, but still. All one would have to do to "hack" their netbook is take out the hard drive, make a backup image of it, install grub, make it boot your favorite linux installer and vuala, you have "hacked" your netbook. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Netshroud Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 ...until the system called home, and your netbook was disabled by the DET on the hardware level. Somehow they have the BIOS call home to the DET. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barry99705 Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 just schools trying to do anything "unhackable" in general is a joke. My school got taken down by virut last year, well a more evolved version of it, but still. All one would have to do to "hack" their netbook is take out the hard drive, make a backup image of it, install grub, make it boot your favorite linux installer and vuala, you have "hacked" your netbook. Your school's sysadmin should have been fired then. Short of a zero day exploit, no managed system should get a virus. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beakmyn Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 Your school's sysadmin should have been fired then. Short of a zero day exploit, no managed system should get a virus. I don't know, when I was doing work in China for a Fortune 500 company a managed PC on a managed network got infected. Then again this was in China. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Netshroud Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 My school got hit by a virus about a month ago - some kid thought it was an app to shuffle icons on your desktop, and installed it on a teachers account. It spread to 3 other teachers before it was removed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NUSHOR Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 im talkin an entire school district. 2000+ computers, servers and laptops, every single one was taken down by virut. so if you wanna take down novel 6 just use virut XD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catchyanow Posted October 27, 2009 Share Posted October 27, 2009 as long as i can remeber my skool has never had a serious virus. my friend was working on some school stuff from his USB Drive and then McAfee poped up saying it had found some sality.gen virus and killed it. i did some research from the log and googled some files. turned out to be webcamXP Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catchyanow Posted October 27, 2009 Share Posted October 27, 2009 From reading the article on the AUS site, it looks like the standard TPM stuff you see in the Dell laptops. That, with a bios password, and an always on internet connection could keep folks from screwing with it too much. With the tpm module activated you can't flash the bios without the password, same with the drive, it won't work without the same password. To get rid of this "always on internet" just open the laptop up and take out your wireless card. No more DET to shut it down :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Netshroud Posted October 27, 2009 Share Posted October 27, 2009 And the wired NIC? You would then have an internet-less netbook. What's the point? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catchyanow Posted October 27, 2009 Share Posted October 27, 2009 just put in one of those internet USB Dongles with another account from another company Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Netshroud Posted October 27, 2009 Share Posted October 27, 2009 And then it dials home. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barry99705 Posted October 29, 2009 Share Posted October 29, 2009 im talkin an entire school district. 2000+ computers, servers and laptops, every single one was taken down by virut. so if you wanna take down novel 6 just use virut XD So. I used to work for a K-12 school district. 23 locations and over 9000 computers, all networked back to the central office. Either 5Ghz microwave links, gigabit fiber optic or our own leased line dsl. We had a couple localized outbreaks on old servers that couldn't be updated(NT4 server FTW), but it never spread from their sub-domain. I guess having a 90% Apple network helps as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ingo Posted October 30, 2009 Share Posted October 30, 2009 Just like Psychosis said this really ain't "hackproof" as "you can't hack into it or get data from HDD", but it's ideal for school networks where you just want your users to use what you give them without having to worry about them messing shit up. Good idea and I would be happy to see theys guys employed in my schools network. EDIT: As it has been suggested you could disable the call home, but then you'd have no internet connection what so ever, this also works in a way as steal proofing (why one would like to steal a netbook for use is another question thou) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.