New Zealand security researcher Adam Boileau has released a program that allows an attacker to log into a password-protected Windows machine via the computer’s Firewire port.
Interviewed in ITRadio’s Risky Business podcast, Boileau said the tool, released to the public today, could “unlock locked Windows machines or login without a password … merely by plugging in your Firewire cable and running a command”.
Boileau, a consultant with Immunity Inc., said he did not release the tool publicly in 2006 because “Microsoft was a little cagey about exactly whether Firewire memory access was a real security issue or not and we didn’t want to cause any real trouble”.
But now that a couple of years have passed and the issue has not resolved, Boileau decided to release the tool on his website.
The Age has the full story.