From the late '80s to the turn of the century, the so-called transparent craze swept the market... and then one day it simply disappeared from store shelves. Still, it found some continuity in the design of products intended for prisons and other correctional institutions. X-Twitter user Zephray Wenting bought a transparent laptop on eBay, and behind its generic appearance discovered many interesting details...
Computers, consoles, drinks... there was a time when we couldn't escape transparent products. Looking inside an object without having to open it always has appeal, but we were definitely ready to leave that fad behind when it (almost) disappeared a quarter of a century ago. That said, transparent devices still take priority in special environments like prisons. Occasionally, some of those devices end up in e-commerce stores, and that's how X-Twitter user Zephray Wenting came across a transparent laptop on eBay. Several bills changed hands, and this is what he received:
What's inside a transparent computer for prisons?
First of all, the machine asked for a password that the seller didn't provide (which presents its own challenges). There's also no operating system due to missing storage drives, and it's impossible to install one directly because the laptop has no USB ports.
A quick model search confirmed it's a Justice Tech Solutions Securebook 5, based on an Intel Celeron N3450 with 4 GB of LPDDR3 memory and an Intel 7625 wireless module. Back to the password: it can actually be removed relatively easily, but Zephray Wenting noticed that the computer completely restores its BIOS when it loses all power (i.e., no battery or charger), so the only way to flash a hacked BIOS is without turning the system off.
As if that weren't enough, he discovered a whitelist for storage drives, and the only one it accepts is called China SATA3 240GB SSD, barely a generic SSD. The solution for the lack of ports came by connecting a USB hub to the touchpad pins, which allowed Zephray Wenting to boot a copy of Ubuntu MATE 22.04.
The best part is that the community quickly responded with tricks to achieve a bypass of the whitelist (essentially, presenting the SSD as if it were a bootable CD), crack the original password, and finally modify the BIOS so that all restrictions disappear. A copy has already been uploaded to the Internet Archive.
