How To Hack CMOS or BIOS
Posted on 18 October 2007 by admin
Sometimes you need to have the BIOS password for a computer to do various things. Even to boot it in certain scenarios. There is a brief guide showing you the easiest and most basic techniques.
Obviously the easiest way is to “lift the lid”. This means you have physical access to the motherboard and you are able to pull the jumper on the motherboard and reset the BIOS.
Dell computers will have a jumper that has the letters PWD or PSWD beside it. In fact, most motherboard manufacturers have a similar jumper. Just short the jumper and turn on the computer. It will beep a couple of times and the BIOS password is now removed.
Failing physical access to the computer, you are still not dead in the water. Using a program named CmosPwd, you can extract the passwords of most BIOS manufacturers. CmosPwd is an open source program and has ready binaries for Windows, Linux, and DOS.
Downside time. To use it, you need to be logged on as Administrator since you need to install a .sys file for it to run in windows. The Linux Version can be thrown onto a LiveCD and voila! BIOS Password!
In Windows download and extract the program and then type;
ioperm –i
to install the driver.
To run the Cmos program just type cmospwd_win.exe and hit Enter.
A lot of garbage will appear for each BIOS supported, since it won’t auto-detect what type of BIOS you have on your system. but there will be one line which corresponds to your BIOS that has a legible output. And that is the password.
Incidentally AWARD v4.50 motherboards have a backdoor, a generic password : AWARD_SW SOYO motherboard have "SY_MB" as master password for Award 4.51. That might make your hacking a little easier.
Tags | General, Linux, Microsoft
November 6th, 2007 at 6:42 am
Hello? Would you please answer:
Do you know what the IOperm does? What files is it adding in the Windows map exactly? Why is this needed when BIOS320 doesnt need it?
Or can i bypass the ioperm thing somehow?
November 7th, 2007 at 9:20 am
Ippel,
The ioperm file is just a driver. It’s ported over from the Linux program IOPerm. What it does is set the port access permission bits for the process to access the BIOS. The only file it adds to the Windows map is the ioperm.sys file itself and registers it as a DLL.
You don’t explicitly need the ioperm file installed as some BIOS can be accessed without it, however Windows may complain. If you are worried about that file kicking around and residing on your system, feel free to try the program wihtout the ioperm as it may work on your system without it.
April 11th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
and failing that, it is afterall an open-source program. gawk at the code for all details