Notebook for prison inmates bought on eBay — 'Justice Tech Solutions Securebook' is locked down but has freedoom-loving Linux

Shot of the "Securebook 5" refusing to boot with a new hard drive.
Shot of the "Securebook 5" refusing to boot with a new hard drive. (Image credit: @zephray_wenting on Twitter)

Over on Twitter, user @zephray_wenting recently documented his buying of a locked-down prison laptop on eBay, and subsequent attempts to jailbreak it into an actually-usable freedom-loving machine.

The laptop in question, the Justice Tech Solutions Securebook 5, is outfitted with an 8th Gen Intel Celeron N3450, a chipset running at a maximum of 2.2 GHz across four cores. There is also 4GB of non-upgradable LPDDR3 RAM, and... no storage to hold an operating system, since the laptop was apparently only intended for docked use. It's not quite a powerhouse, but it does have reasonably modern specs for light desktop use— if you could actually run an operating system on it.

By default, the unit has no operating system, no USB ports, and an unhelpful BIOS that auto-resets itself whenever the power is cut, making it extra difficult to flash a new BIOS over. You will also be presented with a locked password screen on boot. The laptop itself does look kind of nice, though— if you're a fan of transparent plastic shells for your electronics.

Overhead shot of the Securebook 5, revealing it uses an (apparently) standard AMI BIOS. (Image credit: @zephray_wenting on Twitter)

But rest assured: the story does not end there. As always, a techie doubling as a sufficiently determined madman is all you need to address an issue like this. As the original thread continues, @zephray_wenting proves those madman credentials by working around all the limitations he finds. By using a flash programmer, he was able to locate the password in the BIOS' NVRAM and zero it out... but came across the prior-mentioned self-restoring issue in the process.

The real workaround, then? Replacing the BIOS without removing power to the motherboard, since doing so would automatically reflash the original BIOS. This allowed him to enter the original BIOS, but the matter of installing an OS was still problematic. The laptop is also unusual in having a hard drive whitelist, which means only very specific drives could be used even if inserted (and none were included)— so instead, he had to manually mod a USB hub onto the laptop to connect boot media.

Fortunately, there was no USB whitelist of any kind— so the subsequent installation of Ubuntu MATE went off without a hitch! The modder also went on to install the appropriately titled "FreeDoom" onto the laptop, which is basically an open-source effort at recreating the Doom engine while maintaining compatibility with existing Doom mods.

Christopher Harper
Contributing Writer

Christopher Harper has been a successful freelance tech writer specializing in PC hardware and gaming since 2015, and ghostwrote for various B2B clients in High School before that. Outside of work, Christopher is best known to friends and rivals as an active competitive player in various eSports (particularly fighting games and arena shooters) and a purveyor of music ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Killer Mike to the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack.

  • justicetech92
    Hi Team! I produce that laptop, funny to see this happening. Just a point of clarification, it did originally have an SSD and OS (linux based Endless OS usually). The seller here was a government auction retiring their Securebook 5 devices and upgrading to the Securebook 6, so they removed all the SSDs from the devices themselves. The devices are usually used off dock and only docked when needing to access a USB port or network.
    Reply
  • TheyCallMeContra
    justicetech92 said:
    Hi Team! I produce that laptop, funny to see this happening. Just a point of clarification, it did originally have an SSD and OS (linux based Endless OS usually). The seller here was a government auction retiring their Securebook 5 devices and upgrading to the Securebook 6, so they removed all the SSDs from the devices themselves. The devices are usually used off dock and only docked when needing to access a USB port or network.

    writer of the piece here- good to know! thanks for the insight.
    Reply
  • antijingoist
    justicetech92 said:
    Hi Team! I produce that laptop, funny to see this happening. Just a point of clarification, it did originally have an SSD and OS (linux based Endless OS usually). The seller here was a government auction retiring their Securebook 5 devices and upgrading to the Securebook 6, so they removed all the SSDs from the devices themselves. The devices are usually used off dock and only docked when needing to access a USB port or network.
    Hi!
    Any chance of a commercial/ home version for those of us that still like the clear plastic of the 90's but aren't arrested? :D
    Reply
  • usertests
    antijingoist said:
    Hi!
    Any chance of a commercial/ home version for those of us that still like the clear plastic of the 90's but aren't arrested? :D
    You should steal one. Either way, you win!
    Reply
  • abufrejoval
    usertests said:
    You should steal one. Either way, you win!
    Thanks for the laugh!

    But I gess the reason they are transparent is that you don't get to keep it and that these get passed around and could therefore far too easily be used to pass things between prisoners. So the transparency is there to raise the bar a bit, enabling guards to check for obvious 'inserts'.
    Reply
  • usertests
    abufrejoval said:
    Thanks for the laugh!

    But I gess the reason they are transparent is that you don't get to keep it and that these get passed around and could therefore far too easily be used to pass things between prisoners. So the transparency is there to raise the bar a bit, enabling guards to check for obvious 'inserts'.
    No crumbs or shivs in this keyboard.
    Reply
  • antijingoist
    The broken displays can be sharp tho.

    Perhaps people are better than we give them credit for. 🤷🏻😂
    Reply
  • parkerthon
    Prisons have a crazy range of custom electronics and other items they buy that have things like clear shells and are highly tamper/mod resistant. I recently learned more of these types of things from a guy that brought a crt tv from a prison in for a smash melee tournament. There are collectors out there. The clear plastic is indeed to resist contraband trafficking which of course still happens.
    Reply