How To Head Off ATA HDD Password Abuse

An anonymous reader submits "German c't magazine has a story about abusing the security features of ATA hard disks. The bottom line is that almost all ATA hard disks in desktop PCs can be password-protected. However, on most desktop PCs, the BIOS does not support locking this option -- so viruses or malware could set a random password, making any data unreadable unless recovered by professionals."

Comments

Re:professional?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you lock out the drive you aren't going to spread yourself very far.

Think of it like this: A Slashdotter with a venereal disease. He isn't going to infect anyone.

Funny

[soniCron88]

"A DOS from a diskette boots suspiciously slowly"

When does a diskette ever boot not "suspiciously slowly"?

Re:why would you do this?

[markwalling]

u m3an that u actually ha5 3 l3tt3r5? n0 way dud3, l1k3 ur t0ta77y g01ng t0 ru1n 1337 sp33k 4 a11 0f u5 1337 h4x50r5 damn thats annoying