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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 wonder if that kind of system would be vulnerable to spoofing attacks? That would be a pretty nasty trick to play on someone; erase their hard drive by puting a phoenix spoofing server on their network.
Why not just encrypt the whole hard drive or the just sensitive data? To the thief, it's as good as it being erased.
Besides, in either case, if the thief were an enterprising individual they could recover the data. Empty hard drive? Just do a low level scan. Encrypted hard drive? Spend lots of time and resources trying to crack the key.
With that, why not go for the least destructive measure? Unless, of course, Phoenix is going for the Mission Impossible market -- this laptop will erase itself in 20 secs...
"Since TheftGuard's also in the BIOS, even if you remove the hard drive, we can still track or disable the machine, or wipe the drive," he said. Another trick that can eradicate anti-theft software -- running FDISK to reformat the drive -- also is foiled by TheftGuard's place in the HPA section of the hard drive, which is immune to simple reformatting tools.
Any hard disk forensics person will tell you the wonders of dd and netcat working together. Adjust the dd parameters a tad, and the HBA is no longer a problem. If they think the bad guys don't have access to this knowledge, they're as FDISKed as they seem.
This is seriously stupid, so it must have come from marketing, not the techies.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
This is a far saner, less failure prone solution to "The Problem". I have already seen similar hardware solutions used by a friend who develops commercially sensitive commerce stuff, the laptop's a paperweight without the key-card.
Only keep your keys on a something like a USB keychain rather than proprietary hardware. Then attach it to said employee's security pass so they don't leave it plugged into the laptop (or keep a log that emails you every time the laptop is shut down with the USB key left plugged in).
But alas, I can see the PHBs of the world will demand the Mission Impossible version because it sounds cooler.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
...if my network connection is down? Will my machine refuse to boot?
I think some of the technical folks on here have missed the point: A 'ping' signal doesn't have be the regular ICMP ping. It could be any sort of protocol that requests an echo back from the target.
...just my 3 cents worth (Canadian funds :-)
I do think that an awful lot of people on here are getting the point: What happens when I, mister malicious black
hat decides to spend a little money on research material and aquires, by one menas or another, a few of these units for destructive testing and reverse engineering? Now I can spoof the Pheonix server on any given LAN and - proof - Merry Christmas, Bob's your uncle!
I can see the military and paramilitary organizations liking something like this. I'd also be surprised if they don't have something similar under lock and key right now. If I recall, most of the concern over the laptops wasn't over the data on them, but more over how the security procedures when awry. There were one or two that went missing from internal areas that wouldn't have been equipped for travel, but they likely wouldn't have been protected by this system either.
Personally, I think people fall into one of two categories:
1) The stupid/ignorant. These people wouldn't buy this BIOS anyway. They're gonna be hooped when their data gets lost/stolen.
2) The paranoid. These people are probably already using strong encryption, finger print scanners, etc. They're gonna be hooped as well... unless they were paranoid enough to do regular backups! Admittedly, the thief won't have access to the data, but I suspect most of the stolen laptops get wiped shortly after the thief copies the porn off for his own amusement anyway.
I see IT managers loving this because it covers their arses. I see the users either not needing it or not liking it.
-Rob
It's cheep security, None of the peripherals seem to be protected and that's the meat of any system.
If you buy a used PC with that system in it you should have the ability to contact the maintainer of the system to work out ownership transfer. There should be no fee for this.
Prediction by MrPredicter:
One week after deployment a copy of the BIOS will be posted to usenet, Seventy Six Milliseconds after that it's cracked, patched and offered on WareZ sites with instructions on how to burn, unplug or desolder and install the new chip.
Fixing the above, off the top of my head:
Hardwired into the motherboard is a distributed encryption device that holds all of the motherboard chips, drives, ram and compatible installed cards in an inactive state until a USB or other device is insterted. The unlocking device needs to have been activated with a PIN prior to insertion so that the secret key inside can encrypt a challenge response with the devices in the computer. The device in the computer should also do realtime transparent encryption of the drives and offer network encryption as it would be trivial to add. Internal keys in the device would be the provence of the local IT security staff, they could not be changed by the user.
One nice feature of this method is that, with a well setup OS each users network presence (data, settings, drives ect) could be transparently encrypted, each PC would be generic with no user or company data stored on the PC just on the network. Other networkable protocols could be implemented. I think Linux is close to part of this done in software.
The device would need to be distributed, that way an attacker would have to compromise every device in the computer to make any use of the computer. Even the ram would not be of use.
It would be possible to do this in a compatible way to protect the addons use extenders/risers that contain the encryption receivers which would be epoxied to circuit cards, drives and ram would slightly reduce cost and void warranties but allow easier upgrades by just adding a riser. The other method is to order specially modified hardware and only the Motherboard needs this. Yes, there are all sorts of drawbacks mostly stability issues and the CPU is stil not protected from theft.
Isn't there some sort of specification for all this, this didn't just come to me a vacuum, well I vacuumed it up, most probably from the cypherpunks mailing list but can't remember.
Total added cost to the PC, too much:
Just hire a damned good degreed security specialist and a retain a good physical security consultantcy and let them work with a team of people to implement a reasonable security system and stick with it. Add to that good training for the security people and rigorous *reoccuring* background checks. Also a mid/upper level management that actually listens to the experts in this is needed, eviserate the dead weight as needed.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Laptop thieves are largely a stupid lumpen lot.
Any 'smart' laptop thieve is the exception and not who this tool is designed to 'bust.'
It's designed to nail the lowlife at the airport who wouldn't know what to do with the laptop if he did actually open it up and turn it on. He turns it in at the hock shop (you've seen 'em- the ones with the big sign on front 'we buy laptops for CASH' whose windows geeks should just bust out regularly) and uses the $16 he gets to buy crack.
The Club is a device that locks onto your car or truck's steering wheel and prevents the wheel from being turned and thus the vehicle from being driven. There are several very effective ways of removing the Club without using a key, some of which can be done in less than a minute. Despite this, the Club is an effective anti-theft deterrent. Why? It's a huge improvement if you stop just the dumb crooks. Sure, a smart crook can get past it -- but there's a whole lot more dumb crooks than smart ones, so if it doesn't cost too much, the benefits far outweigh the costs.
I think the main problem with computer theft is not the loss of some more or less cheap piece of hardware. That can be replaced easily. The major damage is that you'll lose your data. But security measurs like the harddisk security features that are stored in a hard disks firmware make it very hard to get access to the data. Especially considering that a normal thief is not an IT expert.
If industrial espionage is concerned then your enemy has enough knowledge to do bad things when he has real phyical access to the machine. So a BIOS won't help much to keep an expert away from my data if I don't do additional measures.
What would be really helpful against data loss is a BIOS that goes on strike if I don't do backups of my data frequently... but that leads us to the problem that there is no easy way of backing up 80 Gigabytes on a 3.5 inch floppy...
Let's face it, the thief who steals it won't have the problem, it'll be the poor sap daft enough to buy it at the end of the chain. Just like the stolen coded (i.e. not-working) car radios which get sold at the local pub/garage sale/car boot sale - who's going to have all the necessary gear to check it at the time of purchase.
By the time the buyer realises, the thief is long gone - it just moves the problem, doesn't eliminate it. Just like the car immobiliser law brought in here in Western Australia - all cars have to have them. So now we get people being attacked near their cars or in the house so the thief can get the keys.
Go permanent? In your dreams and my worst nightmares.