Macbook pro Locked

xerxes

hello everyone,

I bought a used macbook pro and used it for a couple of days before it was locked for being stolen !
I also connected to the internet when I first bought it and it was just fine.

what can I do?

AvoK95

I found this: http://www.justanswer.com/mac-computers/646gd-unlock-macbook-without-disk.html

Nabs

@Xerxes, Apple's policy when it comes to this, is that only the real owner of the Macbook would unlock it. No one can do anything for you. Sorry. You have one of two things going on:

Either whoever sold it to you had stolen it and never used it.
Or whoever sold it to you is the real owner and can unlock it.

xerxes

@Nabs I heard that there is a way to unlock it .

Nabs

There's supposed to be a way to unlock anything, but I doubt it's something you'll easily find online. Why not contact the seller?

xerxes

A cousin of mine bought it for me from overseas. and it was supposed to be a good deal ! This is my first time I lay my hands on a mac Laptop and same thing for him.

no way to contact the seller. My cousin works in a shop where someone came and told him he wants to sell his Mac because he needed the money.

samer

You have been sold a stolen laptop that uses the "Find my Mac" feature of iCloud. When connected to the Internet, it can be located, locked or wiped. The owner of the laptop chose to lock it.

I don't know the specifics as to what happens when a mac goes to "lock mode", but I would suggest trying to boot from a Mac OS X DVD and reinstalling the OS. To do that, pop in the DVD, reboot your mac and press C during startup.

Nabs

You can't boot into a locked Mac.

AvoK95

Nabs wroteYou can't boot into a locked Mac.

Is the lock above hard drive level? If not, why not just swap the drive?

Nabs

It's kinda like the HDD password thing. Unless you remove it, it's pointless.

samer

Nabs wroteYou can't boot into a locked Mac.

All you need is access to the EFI, which is loaded when you power up the machine. So yes, you can boot up your Mac (not Mac OS X), otherwise how would you know it is locked?

Is the lock above hard drive level? If not, why not just swap the drive?

This should work. What's even easier is to boot from a DVD and wipe off the drive. The only obstacle would be an EFI password, which I doubt would be set.

AvoK95

Why not just get a new hard drive and reinstall MacOS (Taking into consideration be can't unlock it)

Nabs

I meant booting from DVD. I don't know how exactly it works, but booting from DVD will not work. Tried before.

By the way, something also happened on an HP with me 2 days ago. The owner forgot the password to Windows 8. The system (HP recovery) wouldn't allow recovery without unlocking it first. I tried to wipe it clean, boot from a DVD and remove the Windows, install another, also wouldn't allow me. There's something we're not on to. Looked it up. There was no solution but to replace hard drive. Usually, I boot into Linux, remove the password from console, but with this one, I wasn't even allowed to boot. Not that the disc wouldn't boot, I was getting security messages saying I wasn't permitted to before removing the password.

Now, with the Macbook, I'm not sure what's going on either, and I don't know how the who anti-theft thing works. Is it safe to presume that replacing the hard drive and going online later is risk free?

nuclearcat

With the TPM thing on motherboard this thing can be quite unhackable.

Newer machines (2011 and newer) no longer use the EFI password technique shown on the other site.

The firmware password is now stored directly on a chip on the motherboard and it is not possible to read the code out or decrypt it. The "swapping/changing" the memory to unlock also does not work.

Apple has significantly upgraded their firmware security to make it very difficult for locked computers to be used without authorization. Apple will not unlock computers without proof that you own the machine (serial number registered to your name).

Here's the process:
Tech gets the hash from the lock screen with the secret keypress above.
Tech emails the hash to Apple as the local reps do not have the utility needed to unlock.
Apple's in-house support takes the hash and generates a small "keyfile" that is sent back to the tech.
Keyfile is loaded on a USB stick, and inserted into the computer, which is then rebooted with option key held down
Computer detects the keyfile, removes the password and reboots

It's not possible to enter the unlock code manually, it only works by reading the keyfile from the USB stick. The keyfile is approx 350 bytes and looks like raw binary data (tech showed me the file, but I couldn't get a copy of it).

Unless you have the skills and ability to remove and replace the surface-mount firmware chip on the motherboard, there doesn't seem to be a current way to unlock these machines.

nuclearcat

If you bought it with credit card, you can contact applestore, provide proof of purchase maybe they can certify laptop is stolen or somehow contact owner. Then with this papers you can issue chargeback for your transaction.
If you paid cash to some "shady character"... well, you have a brick.

xerxes

Hello again Guys,

You can not boot from a DVD or any other type of media. it simply won't allow you. there is firmware password as well.

swapping hard drives won't work either, it has to be locked first.

the Pin is independent of the hard drive. so anything related to the hard drive won't solve the issue. (but ofcourse there should be some file on the harddrive with the password on it)

Iam working on retrieving password by mounting the hard drive to my PC. we'll see how this goes.

thanks