One person's journey to jailbreak a second-hand prison laptop is the most compelling read I've had in absolutely ages

What more does one need to add to a story headline like the one above? Basically just that thread below—go read it and then come back and tell me you weren't absorbed even if you had no idea what they were talking about half the time. 

Bought a prison laptop on eBay. Thought it should be just some generic laptop with a clear shell, turns out it's actually a bit more than that. pic.twitter.com/8jOrTkw4jJFebruary 25, 2024

Essentially a person buys a prison laptop off eBay, tinkers with it to see if they can make it work, then tumbles down an enormous rabbit hole of astonishing things you never knew about tech in jails. That alone makes it sound really cool but the whole story, replete with neat pictures and help from other readers, just makes it the best thing I've read in a long time.

The person in question is zephray_wenting on X (or Twitter, if you prefer) and the journey begins with a look at the laptop in question: An older model of Justice Tech Solution's Securebook range. It looks odd at first glance but that's because almost every piece of plastic used is translucent, with the reason being...err...clear. You don't want anyone hiding something inside the laptop for another inmate to use or the like.

But other than just looking like a really cheap laptop, the next thing you notice is the fact the laptop immediately boots to a BIOS password prompt. Again, nothing too surprising, but it's at this point that the doorway to Alice's wonderland truly opens wide. There's no operating system, no storage drive, no USB ports.

Just an Intel Celeron N3450, 4GB of LPDDR3, a Wi-Fi module, one SATA port, and a proprietary connector for a dock of some kind.

At this point, I should imagine that many of us in the same situation would just recycle the laptop as e-waste and consider it just one of those things that happen when you buy random old stuff off eBay. Not the case here: Wenting leveraged all kinds of cool tricks to bypass the password and solve the problem of there being