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Another Stab at Laptop Security
kogus writes "LoJack is licensing its brand name to Absolute Software, which provides Computrace -- soon to be known as the 'LoJack for Laptops' line of computer theft recovery systems. When a stolen Computrace-equipped system is connected to the Internet, it automatically and silently sends locating data to Absolute Software, which then calls out the law. In some cases, Absolute Software customers are eligible for a $1,000 guarantee payment when a stolen system is not recovered within 60 days.
From TFA:
Unless you:
and/or
Nice illusion of security....wonder how many people will fall for it.
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should build this into the hardware or the bios. i know if i stole a computer i wouldn't be in a rush to plug into the internet. unless of course it's a windows machine, in which case i've got a good solid 12 minutes to play around with it.
The bastards have even developed very tiny cinder blocks which they leave the empty laptop skeletons propped on.
...you insensitive clod???
TFA is remarkably lacking in technical details, so I looked at LoJack's site, which doesn't mention a thing about this. So - is this a hardware solution, or a program that gets installed into an existing OS? If the latter, well, how useful is that? While the slashdot crowd and the laptop-stealing crowd probably don't have a whole lot of overlap, I can't see someone not just re-installing the OS to wipe the system in any case.
The spyware and firewall questions seem important as well - if this is just a "Hey, this is box XYZ and I'm at this IP address", talking to lojack's servers, well, fine, but how does the end-user know that they haven't blocked that with their firewall?
I'd love to see something technical on this, rather than some stock-tip-guy's interpretation.
Absolute Software may be guaranteeing $1,000 after 60 days if the laptop is not found, but you'd be surprised what that actually means.
:
I used to work for a computer store. We sold scores of laptop locks; all sorts of kinds of them. The Kensington locks sold like hotcakes because they had a $1,200 "guarantee" that the lock could not be compromised. The problem, we soon found out, is that the theif has to physically cut through the lock and leave behind the pieces. As we all know, some locks can be picked with even a bic pen, and so a lot of good this "guarantee" did for some poeple. Some theives also just took the not-so-hard-to-steal item the laptops were attached too. (Lock it to a bed or desk people, please!)
No evidence to send in, no money back. I am willing to bet in this case there are similar loopholes for Absolute Software to play with.
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Come on Slashdot. What is this, news for AOL users? This kiddie crap. Yes, most thieves will just boot the computer with Windows and try to get on the net. But this is Slashdot. We're nerds or something. And this ain't F***ing news. If I got a laptop that was stolen, hell if it was used, I would format it:
/ faqs.asp
From the website: www.absolute.com
Q. Can Computrace Personal be removed?
A. The Computrace Personal software is a low-level utility that is as tamper resistant as a disk-based utility can be. The software can only be removed by an authorized user with the correct password so please be sure the password is stored in a safe location and not on the protected computer.
Q. What happens if a computer's hard drive is removed?
A. The software resides on a computer's hard drive so if the drive is removed the computer will no longer be protected and can not be located if stolen or lost.
http://www.absolute.com/Public/computracepersonal
Wow, what great protection.
Come on!!!!! This ain't even hardware!!!
CAPS LOCK: ITS LIKE THE CRUISE CONTROL FOR AWESOME
It's not just stolen laptops that send information to their servers. Any laptop with this software installed sends periodic heartbeats to the computrace people.
Our PHB ordered it installed after getting a call from a golf buddy. It was ripped out a week later. The heartbeats contain enough [cleartext] information that the increased chance of the laptop being broken into, or the salesguy socially engineered using the info was deemed higher than the chance it'd ever be stolen.
I've been doing this for years using DynDNS's free dynamic DNS service. I run a client on all my machines that updates their IPs with dyndns's database. If my laptop disappears, I just look to see what mylaptop.dyndns.org resolves to.
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The idea was that if you needed to insert a line or two at some place in your program, you'd be able to do so without renumbering all lines.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
It is outright bullshit!
We had a laptop stolen and called it in.
"Oh, you need to file a police report"
Fine, so we get the numbnuts who lost it to file the report and give us the report number.
"Okay, yes... we have recieved a call home from the laptop, and we know where it is!"
Great! Now when do we get it back?
"Wellll, you cant..."
and it just got worse from there. The police wouldn't retrieve the laptop, and these clowns wouldn't tell us where the machine was. But at least we knew:
- it was in fact stolen and not in the hands of the numbnuts employee
- it was in fact connected to the internet, being used, right then
- we couldn't get it back
- someone was at least enjoying their brand new laptop...
damnnit! This shit just annoys me. I'm going home.
Profit $300 for 60 days work
Well, if you work in IT, at least you'd be getting a raise.