Bypassing the WiFi Hardware Switch on the Lenovo X201 (2023)

The following breaks my heart, as I love the ThinkPad keyboard, but it&#x27;s just not worth it.<p>If your work is sensitive in any way, this is what you can expect from Lenovo:<p>&gt; In February 2021, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that U.S. investigators found in 2008 that military units in Iraq were using Lenovo laptops in which the hardware had been altered. According to a testimony from the case in 2010, &quot;A large amount of Lenovo laptops were sold to the U.S. military that had a chip encrypted on the motherboard that would record all the data that was being inputted into that laptop and send it back to China.&quot; [0]<p>How is this company still allowed to do business in the USA? There are ThinkPads in the most important of places. Not just in government, but in research...<p>There are apparently no adults in the room, so make your own decisions.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Lenovo#Security_and_privacy_incidents" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Lenovo#Security_and_privacy_in...</a>

It warms my heart to see people still taking about the X201’s faulty WiFi switch. I loved that laptop but ended up mothballing it over the switch. It remains a perfect example of how cheaping out on an extremely minor component (a plastic slide-switch) can sabotage an otherwise fantastic product.

a larger hardware fix for the x200&#x2F;x201 is the x2100 upgrade (intel comet lake motherboard, nvme, up to 64gb ddr4, 13&quot; 3000x2000 ips panel).<p>see <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.xyte.ch&#x2F;mods&#x2F;x210-x2100&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.xyte.ch&#x2F;mods&#x2F;x210-x2100&#x2F;</a> for an overview, although sadly the availability is diminishing (and the hardware is far from bleeding edge four years later) -- the above linked vendor is awol.<p>i&#x27;ve got myself 2.5 x2100s, hoping that will tide me over until something new becomes available.

Wait so the kill switch is really just a suggestion that is then handled in the card”s firmware?<p>I guess that’s how things like cameras status led is compromised?

It&#x27;s possible that thinner kapton tape would be easier to cut into a narrow sliver and place over a pin, while having the card still fit in the socket without being too thick?

There are issues with trusting a pci attached wifi device running a pile of closed firmware anyways.<p>If you&#x27;re concerned about this type of thing discard the internal wifi card and use an usb-attached wifi dongle you can unplug to achieve a &quot;wifi physically disconnected&quot; state with certainty.<p>The other advantage is whatever firmware&#x27;s running on the wifi dongle isn&#x27;t going to be potentially accessing host memory over usb, which a pci bus master could theoretically do.

My experience with ACPI is limited to tinkering with it a bit for installing macOS on unsupported systems, but shouldn&#x27;t it be possible to avoid any physical modification and do the same with an SSDT that disables the power to the kill switch?

isn&#x27;t there a simpler way to bypass the hardware switch ...like shorting the switch terminals on the inside to permanently leave it &quot;on&quot;?

It’s an extremely comfy laptop. Still handles the modern web OK, especially if you use uMatrix to block third party garbage.

I just imagine how that piece of tape will stick to the tiny pin in the socket and tears it out when the module is removed next time