Cracking BIOS password

In the last post, we discussed how to protect your computer with multi-level security keys. The most basic one of them is the BIOS password. But there are times when you forget your BIOS password.

This can be seen that when you enter a wrong password three times the system get halted. This is just a security step that BIOS takes from its side. But there are ways to reset these passwords.

motherboard

The most common and recommended way is to use a jumper.

Jumper is actually a chip and it may be located on the different position of the motherboard. Mostly it is located near the edge of the motherboard or near the CMOS battery to make it easily accessible. It has keyword on the top such as  CLEAR, CLEAR CMOS, JCMOS1, CLR, CLRPWD, PASSWD, PASSWORD, PSWD or PWD on the top.

Using a jumper is easy. Jumper is a connector on the top of three pin. You just need to change the pins that jumper is attached. That is if the jumper is on 1 and 2 initially you have to make it 2 and 3.

The other way is to remove the CMOS battery and wait 10 minutes before re installing it. This will clear all your settings as well as the password you saved for your BIOS.

The third method is using Generic Passwords. But this technique do not work in the new generation computers. But old computers have generic passwords like 'password' that could open the BIOS.

You can also use BIOS password utility like CMOSPWD which decrypts the bios password from CMOS. But this method has no use if you don't have access to the operating system of the computer. this utility works with almost all the versions of BIOS.

There are few different ways to crack the password of  BIOS. But if you forget your own password contacting the manufacturer is an easier way to retrieve it.

Protecting your computer from the very Basic Level

When you switch on a computer, the first thing that runs up is the BIOS(Basic Input Output System). This is the place where one can select the booting device and select the hardware component to enable and disable. This is the place which decides the booting order. This is the place where a attacker will reach first if he want to log in and see your data.

So if the problem can start before even going to the Operating System, a computer should be protected from that level one. Normally all the BIOS are provided with two level password security.

The other basic security measure you can take care of is setting a password to your hard-disk. Almost every computer is booted from a hard-disk and if the hard-disk is itself password protected.  It makes your computer is even more protected.

You can make these password as strong as possible according to the level of security you want for computer. And just make sure to make a note of these passwords.

We will also be talking about recovering these (BIOS and Hard-disk) passwords once you lost them.