Click here to turn your HP laptop into a brick

Click here to turn your HP laptop into a brick
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12...brick_exploit/

Quote:

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More bundled software madness
By John Leyden
Published Friday 21st December 2007 23:12 GMT

A second bug in HP laptop utilities creates a means for hackers to turn PCs into "unbootable" bricks.

Flaws in the automatic software update tool bundled with HP notebooks might be abused to alter vital system files (in the kernel or elsewhere) leaving PC unbootable, according to a post on the milw0rm full disclosure mailing list.


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How far back does that go? My son recently gave me his old Pavilion ze1230 laptop to clean out (what a mess!) and if that's affected I want to uninstall that updater if possible. That model is easily 5-6 years old, judging by the updates for it available at the H-P site.

Read the "Technical Details" here and see if they can be found on your HP: http://www.milw0rm.com/exploits/4757

(I.e., C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\eSupportDiags\RulesEngine.dll, CLSID: 7CB9D4F5-C492-42A4-93B1-3F7D6946470D, C:\Program Files\HP\HP Software Update\HPWUCli.exe, etc.).