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Comment by selectodude | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure buying stolen laptops is really the direction we want to go in here.

Stolen? I wouldn't jump to that conclusion so fast. A large source for these are mass sell-offs of old corporate or government gear after the usual 2-5 year upgrade cycle or government sales of impounded devices.

Funny story, I bought a system board on eBay that had a BIOS password on it. The seller didn't answer my messages asking for the password, so I assumed he knew there was a password, but didn't know it (and didn't say in the item description). He just ghosted me. Returning it seemed like a hassle, I really needed it and this was the only one on sale in Europe.

Found the former owner of the laptop where the board came from thanks to the corporate/user name displayed on the password prompt. It was a small IT company.

Contacted them on LinkedIn asking for the password and detailing the situation. Didn't get the password, but the CEO/owner of the company certainly had a surprise.

Turned out one of their guys was selling parts from their laptops/hardware without permission.

Suddenly, the seller on eBay found the message feature and wrote to me, saying I got them in trouble. Shouldn't have ghosted me, then? Just a "sorry, didn't know it had one" and I would've just proceeded to replace the BIOS chip, which was my plan B and it's what I ended up doing.

Stolen is certainly one way laptops (or desktops, I suppose) get locked with unknown passwords. But I've also seen listings for government surplus with unknown passwords.

Thieves are probably more likely to know how to bypass a BIO password than the legit owner.

Agreed. Ask to see the original receipt for anything you buy second hand.

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