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Phoenix Unveils Anti-Theft BIOS
linuxwrangler writes "According to articles at PC World, c|net, Internet Week and elsewhere, Phoenix Technology is introducing a new BIOS-based anti-theft system. Every time a TheftGuard equipped machine connects to the internet it pings a server at Phoenix which can instruct the machine to wipe its hard drive, report its location or disable itself. Given that most people don't want to have their every movement tracked and don't want someone else to have the power to wipe their drives, Phoenix figures that corporate clients are the prime customer. I just wonder who is liable when a company sells a surplus laptop on eBay but gets their inventory control screwed up and reports it as stolen..."
I logged more hours going back to corporate offices and disabling these "features" and assisting their admins mine out old data then I did installing them. I had to stand there and be told how "God damned stupid all of these features are, and how stupid Dell is for using them, and how stupid you are for working with Dell!!!!". This is when I was 19 and had no more business/customer support experience/skills then a guy serving fries at McDonald's. The shit sucked.
Murphy's Law dictates that the benefits of this idiotic and restrictive measure will be over shadowed by it's rare glitch and/or user incompetence which results in the loss of data.
What happens when your battery dies on the SQl server, and the default settings enact this horrid "feature" and your hard drive is slicked? How bad will it suck when it happens to the CEO's assistant's laptop and she comes storming into your pitiful excuse for a NOC right before you were supposed to go on lunch?
Just imagine (no, not a beowulf!) someone breaking into the Phoenix site and instructing every HD to wipe itself. Now Nimbda looks like a joke...
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
I'm sure the average theif doesn't have a clue what a BIOS is, let alone how to remove one, or even tell if it's equipt with theft guard.
RaGe
We're all just noise on the wires..
just a thought: how many corporate (or otherwise) IT admins would actually trust a system that enables someone beyond their control to remotely wipe their hard drive clean?
what if you restrict the pings to the phoenix servers? i'm sure people will put up the IPs eventully.
and what if i completely disconnect it from the internet?
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
Or why not just take out the hard drive and read it somewhere else. I didn't read anything about the HD being encrypted.
I can't wait for the round of virii (outlook attachments) that trick this BIOS into thinking it's stolen.
Or, better yet, someone hacks Phoenix's server to tell all the BIOS's they are stolen.
This will be fun to watch.
When a TheftGuard-equipped system is stolen, the owner provides instructions through the TheftGuard web site. The next time the lost computer connects to the Internet, TheftGuard is activated and either disables the machine, wipes its hard drive, or transmits information on the physical location where the signal originates.
The problem with this seems to be that TheftGuard only performs actions after the stolen computer is connected to the Internet. And by the time that happens (if that happens) it's too late. My understanding is that when computers are stolen, the data on them is what's sought, as it is what's most valuable. And once the data is in the wrong hands, it's too late. The data on it can be copied to another place, and perhaps individual hardware components can be removed and sold. Am I wrong about anything here?
Laura
Now, just how upset would you be if someone came to your door and said that the laptop you bought on eBay last week was stolen? Granted, you'd try to contact the seller to get your money back, but if he's been even the slightest bit clever about things, you might never find out who it was. Further, even if you *DO* find out who the guy is, you still won't get your money back because he'll probably be doing jailtime in the very near future, if he isn't already. Of course, you can legally sue him, but just how do you think you're going to collect?
Not that I'm saying that theft should be ignored... it shouldn't. But doesn't anyone think that efforts might be better spent on technologies that might enable them to catch the criminals *BEFORE* they exploit someone else?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
So if an evil minded Hax0r gets his hands into Phoenix' server, or manages to get at the keycodes and to redirect the trafic, he can wipe all of any corporations laptops if they adopted this scheme?
That means they're introducing a risc to get their business fscked (or rather formatted) if they depend on those laptops and need to connect them to the internet. I think that's a high price to pay to protect against the theft of a few laptops.
Also it doesn't even work: maybe it's hard to change the BIOS chip (given a replacement BIOS and the right equipment it should be doable), but if the thief is really interested in just the data he simply reads it without conecting the laptop to the internet, or he even removes the harddisk altogether and analyses its contents.
If they really want to protect their data they should go for encrypted filesystems or at least encrypt the sensible data so only authorized persons can access it, problem solved.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Ok, so if you "acquire" such a laptop/desktop, just flash the BIOS before connecting to the net. Don't feel like scrounging around for a floppy? Ok, block the laptop MAC at your firewall, plug in the ethernet cable, log where it attempts to go, and redirect that hostname to 127.0.0.1, again problem solved. This is weak stuff that only the absolute dumbest of criminals would fall for.
That said, the interesting part would be to find out what the BIOS uses to identify the PC to the TheftGuard server. My guess is the (yawn) MAC address since it needs to be connected to the 'net to be effective. So change the MAC if it's programmable on the NIC in question, or (if it's not a laptop) just toss the NIC in the trash and spend $10 on a new one.
They'll probably sell a lot of these to CIOs who think they can outwit industrial spies. Yeah, it's better than nothing but the level of security they're making it out to be is way beyond it's piss poor practical value.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Your average criminal is looking for some fast cash, and doesn't know a damn thing about IP, firewalls or flashing the BIOS.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
As it stands now, this looks like a bad idea, as expressed multiple times by many of the comments. Besides the technical problems, to me it points to a larger problem that is growing every day: Private businesses trying to provide law enforcement.
Assuming they could get past all the potential technical hurdles regarding security and authentication, we still are basically saying that a private company can alter/damage the contents of a computer legally without any coordination with law enforcement. That scares me.
Basically, this is sort of a computer version of low-jack. Which is cool. But in this version, it would be as if you could call up the low-jack people, have the car disabled, get a report of where the car is and take care of the matter yourself. Of course, as far as I can tell, low-jack doesn't work that way. My roommate can't find my documentation for the low-jack, make a phone call and leave me stranded just to play a joke.
I'd like to see this system in place. I for one sure would be happier to know that if somebody stole one of my laptops there was some method out there to recover it. But that's a job for the police, not some big business. Sure, Phoenix can build tools that I might buy that would assist the police, but I'd want to be dang sure that they can't do anything to one of my machines until the cops tell them it's all right. And the cops can't tell them that until I've filed a police report and asked them to do it.
Yes, I know that law enforcement has a long way to go to really get a handle on computer based crimes, and at the moment are pretty impotent in catching the bad guys. But what I don't like seeing is big faceless corporations coming in and picking up the slack.
The Internet is generally stupid
a computer gets stolen, thieve removes the harddrive, sticks it into a second computer (with an older BIOS) ..... and reads the disk.
How does this Hot New Protection from Phoenix protect business information/secrets ?
a full-disk encryption seems to be more effective
Oh gee, like thats gonna be REAL popular with people.. How long will it take an enterprising young 14-year-old to write a little hack that sits on a network, opens promiscuous mode on a NIC, watches for calls to Phoenix's verification IP, and answers back with a smurfed "AAGH! DANGER WILL ROBINSON!" reply before Phoenix, Inc. has a chance to?
And I, for one, don't want the operation of my machine to be wholly dependent upon whether or not it's connected to a public network.
Stupid idea, if you ask me.
You want PC security? A note on the wall that says "If you screw with this machine, I'll know, and i'm quite capable of kicking your ass, having you fired, or both." will do the trick nicely.
Seriously..When I was in HS, the guy who ran the computer room was massively anti-piracy. If he even *suspected* you were using pirated shit in the lab, he'd confiscate your disk and literally staple it to the wall. Got the point across.
Bowie J. Poag
Chances are, people will be buying stickers that say that and getting the same effect as those that actually have it. ;) Hmmm... maybe I should start selling...