Reply to post: Re: more of a neat trick than infosec Armageddon

Incredible how you can steal data via Thunderbolt once you've taken the PC apart, attached a flash programmer, rewritten the firmware...

Snake Silver badge

Re: more of a neat trick than infosec Armageddon

It's quite serious if you take it from the perspective of state-run secrets, confiscations or political actions: if you are a political dissident, or arrested even on a trumped-up charge, and you thought that your password/encrypted data could not be used against you because they never will be able to get to it, this changes that outcome.

Corporate espionage on a stolen, yet encrypted, laptop? Done. Don't agree with our political agenda, refused boarding of your plane, and fishing for "evidence" on your locked laptop? Done. Even a simply confiscation of an attorney's, or an accountant's, records, with just a twinkle of a suspicion of fraud, but the prosecutor can't get the courts to agree to a full warrant? Done, and done (and fight about it in the courts but that's later, hopefully after that nice "guilty" verdict that sounds great in the news and on your resume as you run for higher office).

This is horrible news for anyone who used BIOS passwords or encryption in the first place.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon