This presentation includes a live demonstration of security flaws in modern anti-theft technologies that reside in firmware and PC BIOS of most popular laptops and some desktop computers. While the general idea behind anti-theft technology is good, improper implementation can render it useless as well as harmful, or even extremely dangerous. We have found several proofs of unauthorized activations of Absolute Computrace anti-theft software on our private and corporate computers and discovered that this software can be used as an advanced removal-resistant BIOS-based backdoor.
While physical security and a lack of proper code validation have already been shown in prior research presented at Black Hat 2009 by Anibal Sacco and Alfredo Ortega from Core Labs, in our research we demonstrate network security flaws. Our demo will show how to own remote hosts running Absolute Computrace. And there is a cool extra surprise for those who have already heard about Computrace network issues.