COMMAND

    BIOS

SYSTEMS AFFECTED

    AWARD BIOS 4.51PG (copyrighted 1998)

PROBLEM

    Bluefish  found  following.   While  doing  some  dirty  work  for
    Christophe Grenier (both develop different BIOS password  recovery
    tools) he tested the Award 4.51/4.60 masterpassword cracker in his
    own toolkit, !BIOS.  To  surprise, it actually printed a  password
    (on other computers he has tried so far it has only returned  junk
    - the manufacturer has not enabled the backdoor passsword).

    After some  testing, it  turns out  password works.   Not sure how
    many computers have this backdoor password installed. The backdoor
    password is: SY_MB

    NOTICE: This password  is case-sensitive.   Keep shift down  while
    typing the  password.   Also, the  BIOS assumes  American keyboard
    layout, so the  underscore is shift  down and pressing  the second
    key left of backspace (the "?+\" key on Swedish keyboards).

SOLUTION

    There-s the manual & driver CD for the SOYO mainboard.  The header
    on  the  CD  says  "SOYO  MAIN  BOARD", which SY_MB probably is an
    acronym for.  The SY in  the backdoor password makes me think  its
    a backdoor password Soyo may have put in the BIOS.