Laptop Anti-Theft Devices

mathin writes: "The NYTimes has an interesting article about laptop theft 'alarms' and services to help track down your laptop if it's swiped." Laptops are a lot like bicycles: if you have a 50-pound laptop, it doesn't need a lock.

Comments

Mine was stolen

[EnVisiCrypt]

A couple of years ago, I bought a brand new laptop. I went into a store for a couple of minutes and left my month old laptop sitting on the seat of my car, door unlocked (stupid, I know), knowing I would only be gone for a couple minutes.

When I got back home, I tried to boot up and nothing happened after the fan kicked on. After a couple of minutes of jiggling the power cord wire, I opened the case and found that my processor was stolen along with my two 64MB ram units. Someone had bothered to open it up, take the stuff, and close it again

That is definitely a situation in which tracking would not have helped.

The Information can be worth more than the laptop

[Schlemphfer]

Pogue's article had some great things to say about the technology of tracking down stolen laptops. It would have been good to make the point that, many times, the information on the laptop is worth far more than the laptop itself.

About 18 months ago Qualcomm's CEO had his laptop swiped during a conference. The laptop was thought to have all kinds of trade secrets. Losing a several-thousand dollar laptop was a trivial loss for the CEO. But shareholders were rightfully worried that Qualcomm's strategies for implementing CDMA rollout were now in the hands of rivals. To my knowledge, they never got the laptop back. And the theft was, I suspect, for the hard drive's trade secrets rather than for the actual laptop.

would be great if....

[SGDarkKnight]

they could implement something like this into laptop security. I agree it would probably be a bit excessive, but you know as well as I do, that nobody else would ever try to take your notebook once word got around. Check out the video clip of it in action... I'm sure most if you /.er's out there have already seen it in action.

deterrants

[Alien54]

The pcmcia card they mentioned is more of a deterrent than anything else. It is trivial to bypass, but is okay for a public place like a restaurant.

this statistic was startling:

As many as 30 percent of the stolen laptops are gone for good because they are never used to go online after being stolen.

Never mind that If I had a system like that I would just wipe the drive to begin with. Of course, common crooks may not bother.

Dude!

[Romancer]

That has got to be the most easily comprimised password method ever!

you: Tilt left - right - back to arm laptop, and leave...

you : come back and tilt laptop right - back - left

Person outside looking in sees you do this and comes in and takes your laptop, disarming it with your (super secret password tilt combo) while you feel secure cause you spent a hundred dollars on a security device.

what a joke, that method shouldn't even exist, too many stupid users are gonna use it.

Re:Dude!

[EricLivingston]

Actually, I've tried it and it's EXTREMELY hard to duplicate the motions - the accelerometer inside is incredibly sensitive. I sat across from the CEO of Caveo who, right in front of me, armed the mechanism with a couple of tilts - a very simple motion password. We watched him do it a couple of times. I, and my companion, tried to duplicate that motion for several minutes and completely failed. You really don't have any idea how hard it is to duplicate exactly the motions of another's arms until you try.

The sensitivity of the angles you tilt, for instance, is something like within 1 degree, and the acceleration parameters are also extremely precise (so, for instance, if you lift the laptop an inch or two while also tilting it, this counts).

Surprisingly, it's actually NOT that difficult to duplicate your own motions - muscle memory is far more precise than I ever thought.

But, really, until you try it you can't imagine how difficult it really it to duplicate even simple motion passwords.

Insturance

[swagr]

True story:
I was working in a corner of a cafe late at night when I guy came in, sat beside me, stuck a knife to my side and said "put the laptop in the bag".

My laptop was locked to the table, but I gladly unlocked it in return for my safety.

Anyway, insurance covered the loss.

Also, I had a removable hard drive with all my work on it, and I pleaded with the thief to let me keep it, and he let me!

So ultimately, I ended up with a newer machine, and a spare drive, and the thief ended up with a password protected laptop. Just goes to show, crime doesn't pay.

Re:Insturance

[Rogerborg]

• I was working in a corner of a cafe late at night when I guy came in, sat beside me, stuck a knife to my side and said "put the laptop in the bag".

I'll top that. Friend of mine came out of the University about 1am, and locked up behind him. Three guys grabbed him, showed him the knife and said "Play nice". They hailed a cab, put him in it, and said "Take us to your apartment," which he did. They then took him up, sat him on the floor, and carefully cleaned the place out, including his laptop (and the keys to the University), and made it utterly clear to him what would happen if he reported any of this. He said that it was a surreal experience, and the scariest thing was how utterly casual and bored they were, like they could not give a fuck how many people saw them, whether he shouted for help, or whether they knifed him or not. On the bright side, they did pay for the cab.

• I ended up with a newer machine, and a spare drive, and the thief ended up with a password protected laptop. Just goes to show, crime doesn't pay

Well, crime probably paid about $50, the price of a "good cosmetic condition, fails to boot" laptop on eBay, or at the local fence. And that's rather the point about laptop security: it doesn't matter how bad you make the proposition look, if someone decides to take your laptop (or cell phone, or anything else) they're going to do it. You will have to make the decision whether it's worth carrying something so valuable that you're prepared to risk your life protecting it. I think that you (and my friend) made the right decision. "Hero" tends to be a posthumous epithet, barring superior firepower and the opportunity and will to use it.

The flipside of all this is: never, ever buy goods in a "too good to be true" deal from someone who's not keen to answer questions on where they came from, because more often that not, there's a victim in there somewhere. Are we all quite clear on that?

A few points

[Rogerborg]

1. Having an old/crap/50lbs laptop will only stop it from being stolen if there's an obviously better one sitting right next to it.
2. When the alarm goes off, what's the first thing the thief is going to do? Better hope that your laptop can survive being hurled violently to the ground.
3. If the thief doesn't throw your laptop away, are you going to chase them? If you think possession of your laptop is more important than your health, perhaps you need to evaluate why you feel that you need to carry something so valuable that it might get you killed.
4. (A little aside about human nature) According to my friends in IS, most corporate owned laptops are stolen by employees. (Pop quiz: How many corporations want to collect metrics that say how crooked their employees are? It's simply recorded as unspecified theft, or even depreciation) My current employer actually has a tacit policy that laptops pass down the food chain until they reach a dark, quiet corner, then they slip out the back door. It's actually less hassle and cost to the company than trying to protect them, or for that matter trying to sell them on. Also, having confidential files on a stolen laptop is a lot less embarassing for the IS guys than having them found on a "wiped for resale" laptop. Very cynically enterprising of them.

If you don't want your laptop stolen, don't ever let it get into a situation where it can be stolen, because (people being what they are) it will be. And if you think you absolutely can't live without your laptop, do yourself a favour and evaluate what you actually mean by that. Chances are you'll find it's simply not true.

Re:A few points

[Anonymous Coward]

He's saying (if I may jump in) that allowing thieves to operate conveniently is, in a way, rewarding criminal behaviour. Jeffrey Snyder wrote about this.
I think it applies most to the company cited that expects old laptops to disappear out the back door. That seems -very- stupid and unethical to me. Not only do they have a (albeit unwritten) -policy- of rewarding unethical behaviour. But they're losing a fantastic opportunity to reinforce the good employees.
A former employer of mine (WRQ Seattle) used to have a semi regular employee sale where you'd "buy" items for basically what it cost them to pay someone to write the reciepts and make entries in the inventory system. Geeky employees walk off happy as a daisy with their 7 year old HP diskless workstations, your inventory system remains accurate and you don't end up giving stuff only to the employees who are bold enough to walk out the back door with it. Seems obviously a "goodthing"tm to me. bk425