ASUS repair center asks pin/decrypts for battery swaps!

Life Technology
1

I’ve been an IT guy my whole life, CompTIA A+ certified, etc.

I went to swap my battery out of my laptop because I’m lazy and would need to order the battery anyway. I went to the repair center near GuangHua across from the art park on the 3rd-ish floor.

…These guys asked for my OS pin – which was already glowing with phishing 101 red flags. I entered my pin instead of give to them curious what they intended.

Then immediately started decrypting my bitlocker drive. I’m like… wait what the hell? I grabbed the laptop back and changed the pin (in case they saw me enter it), cancelled the decryption, and started asking questions.

  1. It was “to test”
  2. I said it’s a battery swap, why not boot to BIOS?
  3. They said they had their own drive to test it, so “need to decrypt for it to work”
  4. I said encryption is PER-DRIVE… even if you remove the entire drive, you can still boot to BIOS or boot up your own bootable drive/usb np
  5. They said if I don’t decrypt, it’ll “lock my computer” and then asked if I have my backup Windows key (maybe they meant a bitlocker recovery key? They definitely said windows though) and hinted that Windows could wipe.
  6. At that point, I proceeded to offer a disgusted look before taking my laptop back.

I’ve replaced my battery at coolpc before and didn’t have to go through any of these shenanigans. I should’ve just gone there. This place was so close by and so official, with a chance of still having warranty.

What the f*ck. How is this place not shutdown? Not a single person realizes this is all super sus? People are too trusting in Taiwan - but that’s also what makes phishing targets so easy.

I have no idea what they do with pins and fully unencrypted drives (complete, unscoped access) when changing batteries, but my security knowledge SCREAMS this is not normal nor should it be unless you have an OS specific issue.

2

If it was some third party store I wouldn’t be surprised, that place is like a flea market. I think they will go with the process that’s worked for them in the past and that they are familiar with, not necessarily the most correct process since it may be too much hassle.

Some diagnostic tools may require password to run if they don’t want to go with bootable drive option. I would chalk it up to incompetence rather than malice. It’s not unheard of for even Apple to ask for login password to replace a battery, though I don’t think they do this anymore.

Though if they are scanning your drive for secret stuff I also wouldn’t be surprised. That place is a flea market.

3

Some manufacturers charge extra for support options that allow you to keep the hard drive while performing (warranty) services.

Otherwise, it apparently seems rather common (not only in Taiwan) that repair centers request the password / PIN - which I agree is a big NO…
For them, it’s probably easier to verify that everything works - and it avoids having to deal with angry customers if they send out a device that doesn’t even boot…

4

Because (not true for every system), modern laptops have a TPM module and Microsoft forces bitlocker encryption with new installs on OEM devices. I decrypted my laptop when I bought it. Removal of the battery may clear the UEFI settings which may clear the TPM and render your install of Windows unusable without encryption keys.