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Stolen Laptop Alarms
torok writes "Three Engineering students from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC, Canada have developed a laptop alarm complete with remote pager that detects if your laptop is being moved and sounds an alarm. The article is a bit sketchy on details, but it sounds like a cool idea."
... and if I hear one of these going off during a test, I'll find the engineers and beat them up!
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Like car alarms, I'm sure that laptop alarms will prove to be an important tool in the war on theft... not. This is going to be annoying as hell.
Remote tracking
Its one thing to know that your laptop is being stolen, and another to be able to track it down.
Something with a GPS would be more useful.
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
DANGER WILL ROBINSON! DANGER!! Now if only the robot would come and kick the crap out of the guy taking the laptop... that would be great.
Is this where I can look at stolen laptop alarms? Mine was stolen last week on the subway...
Perhaps not exactly the same, but it's already been done for $50.
I am feeling fat and sassy
1. Secretly Detach Laptop Alarm
2. Attach to dog Bowser and set dog free.
3. Claim that laptop was lost.
4. ???.
5. Profit.
6. Buy new laptop with alarm.
7. Repeat.
If you can't find the guy who walked off with your laptop, press button 'B' and collect his ashes.
Beep beep beep, you laptop is being stolen.
Beep beep beep, you will never see it again.
Beep beep beep, haha.
I just keep a laptop that isn't worth stealing.
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
I wonder what possesses people to steal others' laptops. Is there a deep insatiable need to steal inherent in the theives that brings them to that point? Are they doing it for kicks? Are used laptops really selling for so much at pawn shops and computer shows?
If we could understand the motivations of the theives, perhaps we could do away with these band-aid measures and find a way to keep laptops safe without having to resort to alarms, locks, and any number of other gizmos that only make owning a laptop a pain in the ass.
I have been pwned because my
Good. Maybe I can adapt one to go off when my wife picks up my wallet.
Anti-gravity? That was *my* little secret! But I never patented it! Boy, was *that* dumb!
I went to a university that installed PCs in each dorm room. This was 6-8 years ago, so maybe it's more common now, but at the time it was pretty revolutionary and cool. Anyway, a friend-of-a-friend brought his own PC to school and decided he didn't want the university's PC cluttering up his room. So he unhooked it and took it to another friend's place, off campus (not with the intention to steal, just relocate for the year). This other friend had DSL. 15 minutes after putting it on the DSL connection, tne university police department was at the door.
In theory, I know why this could happen, and actually thought it was pretty funny because it was a stupid thing to do. But obviously, there was some sort of "call home" software. Anyone know for sure?
This finally explains why this thinkpad won't stop its incessant beeping.
If a notebook alarm goes off, the computer's already gone, but a custom paint job is easy to track down, given police involvement and photographs. It works for me!
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
The POINT of a laptop is that it is portable; that you can bring it with you wherever you go.
Isn't it your desktop that is more likely to be stolen while you are away than the laptop right there in your messenger bag?
If people would just pay more attention to their possesions and surroundings there wouldn't be a real big problem with this in the first place. Having an alarm will just give people an even more false sense of security, when inevetably, just like cars, the alarms will do little to stop theives.
Buckethead
In the end it comes down to the intelligence of the thief, the amount of computer experience they have, and the reason the laptop is stolen in the first place. The two reasons would be data recovery, the other to just sell the hardware. (I suppose a third would be to use it themselves).
The future of this technology I believe will be a BIOS based service. Something hard- coded in the BIOS that will be used to track the laptop. The car industry uses a GPS satellite to track some of its more expensive automobiles and perhaps that is where the laptop industry will go.
[..]
Systems hard coded with small GPS tracking units will creep into the corporate world, and users will be able to track where their laptops are if they?ve been stolen, and recovery will be more and more common.
1) Slip Zip-Lock under and around alarm.
2) Poor some water into bag, just enough to cover alarm.
3) Enjoy laptop.
You would be surprised just how easyily a lot of electonics are defeated with water. Nice idea, but it needs to be made water proof/resistant.
Yes, I call that 'uglification'. It's a good trick to keep the staplers, tape dispensers, footstools, etc., from running off at work.
I wonder if it might be enough to stick a prominent "Protected by Brink's Security" sticker on the lid. Maybe glue an old beeper case on, with a push button that flashes a red LED. After all, the threat of deterrence is almost as good as deterrence itself.
Anti-gravity? That was *my* little secret! But I never patented it! Boy, was *that* dumb!
Its interesting to know no company has really done something like this already. In the US we have the Lo Jack system for tracking stolen cars, but a company would have to wonder whether someone would be willing to pay anything over 200.00 for a laptop that'll probably be worth that much in a few months judging by the insane prices of comp stuff.
Governments and companies might be interested in this stuff, but to the ordinary joe blow user I don't think it means much. I think most people would take care of their personal laptops much more than they would something they didn't pay for. Aside from that, one could probably do something with an RFID tag on their own with some success if they can find some way to get their RFID tag to interact with a GPS system.
Another alternative would be a good old fashioned mechanism of tracking down MAC addresses, which would be painful but that is already doable.
MoFscker
The idea and actual implementation of the device was done over 5 years ago by some students for the Duracell competition. I don't recall what is it's callled exactly but you can google for it.
Down in South Africa, They have car alarms that shoot flames and kill the thief.
Now my invention, car batteries attached to the laptop, of course it might be to heavy to steal, will have to work on that aspect...
Looks exactly the same, minus the pager thing, which is probably only good for about the same range as a really loud siren.
There's also a company that made a PCMCIA version; if you moved the laptop any more than a certain amount, it started shrieking using a siren built-in to the card itself. I think it might have also had some software tie-ins, don't remember what
Please help metamoderate.
...on a laptop it's really stupid. I have a lojack installed with something VERY similar to this. It's one of the best anti-theft devices I've ever had on any car. I have a little keychain that I keep with my keys and inside the car is a kind of transmitter. If the car is moving and the keychain is not present, lojack will call my cell phone, send me an e-mail (I receive e-mails on my phone) and call my house. I can add more contact methods (text messaging, more phone numbers, like work or something) but these are the easiest ways to contact me.
The good thing about this (and the bad thing about the laptop one) is if I'm using a car, it's going to be on and the keys are gonna be in it so the keychain is gonna be in the car. If I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to park, turn off my car, take the keys out and go to the bathroom. Now if I'm using a laptop, and I want to go to the bathroom, I'm not going to carry the laptop with me (and if I was going to carry the laptop the device becomes completely pointless.)
This device is useless, if you're going to be 15 feet away from your laptop (ok my bedroom is 15 feet across, it's not very far) you should be able to see anyone going near it that's going to attempt to take it. And if they're going to snatch it up while you're that close this little alarm won't help since they're gonna run and not really care who hears the alarm (they could always just smash it off with their foot, I mean it just hangs off the side, it might crack the case of the laptop but who cares they just got a free laptop.)
I've read more than a few of the posts degrading this particular technology. But let me ask those folks, how often do you leave your laptop and walk into the next room? I see this "invention" as a first-defense sort of thing. Sure, it would be made better by GPS tracking, blips on a PDA, and even a shiny new decoder ring. These things take time. Lest we not forget the ever-present business model, if this initial configuration takes off, GPS won't be far behind.
------ Send your whines to
Frankly, I just don't care . . .
This is what I consider one of those forehead-slapping-in-frustration type "inventions". Its the type that people come up with when they're trying to invent something. I won't go through all the layers of reasons why a laptop alarm is stupid. (A bunch of the comments already do a good job.)
Want a GOOD idea? Why not make a nice tiny USB fob with an alarm and a motion sensor. Stick it in, launch the app that comes with it (maybe include a 8mb flash disk with an app version for Win/Mac/Linux) and type your password. It it requires that password typed on the machine to move the motion sensor without it screaming bloody murder.
I doubt it happened. Besides, when have you seen campus police move that fast unless it's to ticket your illegally parked car?
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Almost all available theft protection methods for laptops seem not to be working with Linux. So I have setup a survey of theft protection methods, which work for Linux laptops and notebooks. I hope to extend the survey to protection methods for Linux PDAs and mobile (cellular) Linux phones, too.
More importent than the fact that you alert yourself "your PC is stolen, wakeup" is that your data is safe and can not be read by the thief.
Hard disc encryption (at least your homedir with your ssh keys, pgp key and other sensitive data) is more importent than a buzzing alert that gets turned off like car alarms....
Hello,
I saw a similar device for sale as Best Buy from Fellowes called a Mobile Proximity Alarm. From looking at their web site it doesn't seem to have a motion detector, but sets of an alarm if the sensor is moved more than fifteen feet from the base. It cost about $30.00USD.
Obviously, it's hard to compare this against something which only exists in prototype form, but has anyone used one of these? If so, how well did it work?
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Dexter is a good dog.
i know a few people that jack laptops. you are exactly right, nobody wants to jack some laptop with hard-to-remove unique identification. it just makes it a bitch to sell. people tend to think about preventing stealing in the wrong way. instead of 'what would make this harder to take' they should be thinking 'what would make this harder to sell'. because THAT is the only true deterrent to stealing.
This removes the annoyance of an audible alarm, and requires a thief steal both the laptop AND the fob, assuming he/she knew a fob was even being used.
As an added bonus, if the fob is turned off, it ain't detected by the laptop. So the filesystem is now unusable. Combined with keyboard-based logins, this system would provide quite a bit of convenience.
Pretty cool stuff. I love seeing engineering students come up with new tech.
i've taken the opposite approach to alarms. if i have to leave the room, i just crank slayer on my laptop at full volume. when i hear the music begin to fade away, i know my laptop is being being stolen.
i call it my "proactive audio alarm system." maybe i should file a patent?
TODO: come up with a clever sig
I wonder if the inspiration for this is stolen laptops in a university setting. More generally, I wonder if this would work well in an open office setting where the public for whatever reason can easily gain access. I work in such a place, and laptops get stolen all the time from people who are lazy, don't lock up, step out "for just one second", and come back to their offices to find their laptops gone. There are usually people around, but nobody notices the theft. If the system is not prone to false positives, then it would have potential where I work.
Why bother with an audable alarm?
6 2%255E13762,00.html
Install a mobile phone inside the unit, which obviously would give the machine an internal modem. Then use a mobile tracking servive to find out where the mobile is if it ever gets inched. http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,83645
That and a decent bois lock and you should be safe!
You've got this sweet lil' notepad computer... when Mr. Thief put's stylus to display, the stylus explodes a dye capsule out the back covering Mr. Thief, and Mr. Thief's clothes with a pernitious and utterly permanent purple dye. Then the screen begins to flash;
Dear Mr. Thief,
You've just been sprayed with a powerful toxic dye. You have approximately 10 hours to report to the computer's true owner before it becomes too late to receive the antidote. You can reach the owner at; *PLACE YOUR PHONE NUMBER HERE*. You will then be given instructions on where to go, and how to get there. Your life depends on following these instructions exactly. This is what you get for being a waste of human DNA. I hope the rest of your day sucks too...
*The Original Owner of this Computer*
P.S. The computer better be in good condition when you arrive, or you won't be when you leave...
I mean with the rysin scare at the Senate, would you risk not getting in touch with the owner? Of course, you then contact the police, inform them you're running your own little sting operation, and make sure Mr. Thief is properly greeted as you get your computer back.
--Genda
That's right, put a bright yellow placard with big black letters on top of an open laptop's keyboard that says "Steal Me!". A thief would think twice about stealing it since he might feel it's a joke being played on him.
I'm currently doing my Bachelors in electronics in a UK University, where final year EE students participate on the development of a fingerprint recognition device for mobile devices sponsored by one of the biggest cell phone companies (Sony-Ericsson). It's been done before for notebook computers (i believe siemens or Acer had a similar device), and we are working on the implementation of such device for mobile phones that are the most common things beeing stolen in the UK. The basic principle of this system is to match the pattern of the fingerprint of a person with the current stored fingerprint "image" of the owner on the phone. As soon as the microprocessor detects a false fingerprint image fed to the device, the phone locks up and idealy sends a sms to the service provider that the phone is beeing stolen. I, personally have worked on the FPGA implementation of the microcontroller, done with Verilog on Xilinx software and i'm confident that in the following years we will see lots of similar devices beeing manufactured for high-priced/valued products such as notebooks, phones, pdas etc.
Roses are red, violets are blue, most poems rhyme, but this one doesn't...
Well, there's probably some company in China that's already prototyped a cheap knockoff in the last day or two that'll be on the market in 2 weeks for $25 :)
As for the alarm side of things, instead of noise, I'd personally like a laptop security system that had a smokecloak-type system installed in it:
http://www.smokecloak.com
When the alarm goes off, it generates an enormous amount of smoke/fog from a liquid. Gets a LOT of attention and in a small room, would prevent anything else from being stolen.
I'd definately have one of those installed if I owned a retail business.
Infact, I wish they'd make a car model - would make it pretty tough to steal a car if the passenger compartment slowly (so that the thief would hopefully be smart enough to stop safely before the vision was totally obscured) filled with dense smoke so the thief couldn't see.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
I saw one at Best Buy 3 days ago. Two parts, one on the unit, one in your pocket, alarms if they're more than 15 feet apart. google for proximity alarm site:bestbuy.com - it's sold by Fellowes and costs $30.
For some reason, I thought that an alarm device (like a lock) was already in market where you attach the alarm device to the laptop and the other component you keep with yourself. If the distance between you and the laptop exceeds a certain range, the alarm would go off...
The other thing I remember reading a while ago is there is a company that sells this service where if you subscribe to it and if your computer gets stolen, they can track it by IP address and they actually caught someone where you just install their software that secretly pings their server when you get online. The thief didnt format the stolen laptop's hard disk and just started using it. The owner had informaed this company which then went with the IP address to police and these guys caught the thief...
You'll find that it gives you a five-second window to deactivate before the alarm starts blaring...
Should cut down on the noise pollution "oops, accidently tripped my alarm" incidents.
Besides, it's not like a car alarm that goes off when somebody walks too close to it (or brushes up against your door in the parking lot, or taps your car with a shopping cart, etc). Somebody actually has to pick this up and move it before it sounds the alarm. Personally, if somebody is moving my laptop in my absence, you can bet I'm going to assume the worst and correct their behavior...
Sign me up for one of these babies.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
You must have had a lot of fun taking that through airport security... :-)
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
We were rolling out a wireless network and it was at the manager's discretion on who received wlan cards for their laptop (since there already was a wired network, unessential for everyone to have it). This was back when the cards were worth around $80. Anyway, one of the engineers was turned down, and that day he went and stole someone else's the wlan card. By the end of the day he was escorted out when the stolen wlan's MAC address was traced to his logon.
Th POINT is for the thief to notice it and be discouraged from stealing the laptop... Now you have to make it nearly inseparable from the laptop and it might even work...
As an SFU student and somebody that works on the SFU Surrey campus in research, I had the oppertunity to play with the actual prototype that these students put out.
I had my laptop secured with it, to test it out for a day.
Two things with it that I'd like to see rectified:
1. It seemed overly sensative to motions around it, a heavy truck went by outside (~6m away) and it went off.
2. if you use it, you do NOT have any way to cable-tie your laptop to a desk or whatever. yes it could be mutually exclusive, but I think these would be a lot more acceptance of this if you could use it in addition to another device to physically secure your laptop.
ICQ# : 30269588
"I used to be an idealist, but I got mugged by reality."
Several years ago, I remember issuing one of our company's salespeople a brand new Toshiba laptop with all the extras. He immediately took it, placed it in his new leather carrying bag, and put it in the trunk of his car. Later that afternoon, someone had taken a crow-bar, pried his trunk open, and stolen the whole thing - while his car sat in the company parking lot!
Laptop theft is VERY popular, because of the ease of reselling them, the portability, and the fact that you don't look "out of place" carrying one around in public.
There are already software systems in place that report your stolen laptop's whereabouts as soon as the thief tries connecting it up to the Internet. Seems to me this might be rather effective, but you're likely to only find the poor soul who purchased it used, not knowing it was stolen - rather than the original thief.
I'm not sure about this alarm idea. Probably not bad if you want some extra assistance catching someone who does a "snatch and run" on your laptop in a restaurant or something - but I bet many more laptops are stolen right out of hotel rooms while the owner is at dinner, out of vehicles, etc.