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How Best Buy’s Computer-Wiping Error Turned Me into an Amateur Blackhat

posted by martyb on Saturday June 13 2015, @08:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the It's-Milliner-Time! dept.

Phoenix666 writes with an interesting anecdote posted on Ars Technica:

We put a lot of trust in big companies, so when they let us down it can have serious consequences.

I recently went shopping for a new computer. I wanted a low-end laptop for light work, and the HP Stream seemed like a good deal. That deal was made even sweeter when Best Buy offered to sell me a returned one for almost 20 percent off. The salesman assured me that it was in like-new condition and that they would honor all warranties. Sold.

I always get a little thrill opening a new gadget. The computer looked like it had never been touched and all the paperwork was still in sealed bags. There was even a slip of paper in the box with the ID of the tech who cleaned and certified the unit.

So it surprised me when I booted up and saw someone else's name and Hotmail address at the login prompt. So much for like-new!

As I stared at the full name and e-mail address of the previous owner—let's call him David—I wondered. Could I get into this computer another way? It was mine after all. And how much more could I learn about him? How bad of a mistake had the store made?

Any similar stories out there Soylentils care to share?

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  • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Sunday June 14 2015, @01:09PM

    by Geotti (1146) on Sunday June 14 2015, @01:09PM (#196112) Journal

    a 486 pentium

    Huh?

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday June 14 2015, @09:44PM

    by VLM (445) on Sunday June 14 2015, @09:44PM (#196252)

    One of these probably early 90s anecdotal story:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_OverDrive [wikipedia.org]

    I had a cousin of this chip, that put a fast 486 in a 386 socket.

    This general kind of thing has been around since the 80s. V20 or V30 or something was a faster pin compatible 8088 "IBM XT" and there was a hitachi chip compatible with a 6809 that added some nifty features.

    Obviously this didn't help the memory IO speed, but it usually did wonders for on-chip cache performance and on-chip FPU performance etc.

    Obviously these gadgets work better with "intel style" architecture where even a NOP instruction takes like 47 clock cycles to process. On a "motorola style" architecture where everything is RISCy and takes like one clock cycle per instruction the payoff is minimal.