Open Source Adeona Tracks Lost & Stolen Laptops

An anonymous reader writes "Adeona is the first Open Source system for tracking the location of your lost or stolen laptop that does not rely on a proprietary, central service. This means that you can install Adeona on your laptop and go — there's no need to rely on a single third party. What's more, Adeona addresses a critical privacy goal different from existing commercial offerings. It is privacy-preserving. This means that no one besides the owner (or an agent of the owner's choosing) can use Adeona to track a laptop. Unlike other systems, users of Adeona can rest assured that no one can abuse the system in order to track where they use their laptop."

Comments

Reformat HD = Free Laptop?

[QuantumLeaper]

All you have to do is reformat the hard drive and now some one has your laptop for free.

Re:Reformat HD = Free Laptop?

[Verteiron]

Sure. This is betting on the fact that a lot of thieves are too dumb to do that, and either use or pawn the laptop without doing much to it. I'm willing to bet that's the case more often than not.

Re:Reformat HD = Free Laptop?

[ChowRiit]

I suspect you may be somewhat overestimating the average criminal's technical abilities or knowledge. Maybe if this became a common sort of tool and were used all the time, people might begin to learn how to avoid it, but I can't see it being install on more than a tiny fraction of a percent of laptops for the near future...

Re:Reformat HD = Free Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most thieves don't know enough to reinstall a laptop

Ah, the quaint image of an ignorant ruffian thief vs the bright (white) middle class victim. Do you have any stats to go with that prejudice or did you just pull that assumption out of your oft-seated backside?

I've been approached a few times to reinstall laptops that people have "acquired".

Yes, I too have been approached by people who had bought second hand laptops and wanted help with reinstallation. And I managed to help each one without some irrational ungeekythief association.

Re:Reformat HD = Free Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

you have to understand that half of the thieves will steal the laptop and go pawn so they can get some quick cash. the other half is interested in what information they can obtain from the stolen laptop in order to commit fraud.

it's these thieves that you have to watch out for and protect yourself against! i can always replace a laptop. sure i'll be pissed and upset, but the harm that the theft can do to me stops at stealing the laptop.

it can take YEARS and thousands of dollars to repair the damage identity theft can do.

Re:Reformat HD = Free Laptop?

[Vendetta]

How would it be illegal black hat activity on my part? It would be the fault of the douchebag who connected my laptop (that they stole) to this imaginary corporation's network. I'm not the criminal, the person who stole it is. Please, explain your logic to me.

Re:Reformat HD = Free Laptop?

[photonic]

Consider someone connecting a stolen laptop to a corporate network. Just because your laptop was stolen doesn't mean you have a right to examining the internal topography of that corporate network, and sending the information to a third party. I'm amazed that the authors of this software are stupid enough to do so!

So according to your logic, if I have a machine at my office that (for some good reason) sends a scan of the local network to HQ, reboots random local machines and sends goatse pictures to the local printer, then if someone steals this machine and plugs it into his network, they have the right to complain??

Re:Reformat HD = Free Laptop?

[0100010001010011]

Not everyone is a *nix geek. Yes there is a linux way to do things but not everyone wants to deal with that. There is an OS X and a Windows version.

I bought my sister, brother and myself a version of Orbicle's Undercover which does everything this does and a bit more. It'll take pictures of the thieves (if your Mac has a built in iSight), change contrast, etc.)

I was pondering making my own group of shell scripts do do something similar.
curl -O mywebsite/stolen.txt. Leave it at a 0, then make it a 1 when my laptop is stolen. Then have it do weird stuff. isightcapture can record pictures of someone as soon as the lid opens or during invalid login attempts. There are apple scripts to change the monitor contrast, computer volume, say stuff. (All of which Undercover does).

As soon as it detects it is in an Apple Store (by host name) it cranks the volume up and announces "This laptop is stolen. This laptop is stolen."

I thought about how much work that would take and I thought, meh. I'm watching TV and bought Undercover.

Finally, this is open source. Isn't that what the slashdot crowd bitches about most "ZOMG IT'S NOT OPEN SOURCE BURNNN". Someone took the time to build an installer for 3 different systems, make it so it used a DHS so you didn't have to configure FTP settings (You know not everyone has a my.website that they can read logs on daily) and all 1/2 the people here can do is bitch about how stupid it is or easy it could be to do with cron.

Thieves are stupid. Most will boot the machine and use it. Look at Orbiclue's "success stories." One thief loaded WoW then tried to delete all the personal files of the person. This isn't going to stop a corporate hacker but the jackass that breaks into your car, you might have a chance.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:But without a central service

[acklenx]

"So who do I call to confirm that this laptop is stolen?"

The owner is probably the only person that should report it stolen regardless of the software "tracking" it. And how does someone know this laptop is your laptop? Perhaps the serial number (unless it has a large scratch through it). You do file that information with your insurance company, right?

The challenge is set

[tttonyyy]

users of Adeona can rest assured that no one can abuse the system in order to track where they use their laptop

Honestly, publishing that on slashdot is like telling a small child "there is no way you can reach the delicious stash of chocolate in that cupboard right there"

Re:But without a central service

[Joe Snipe]

Now that's just silly. First off, if they are not technically oriented, you would simply drop them into dummy mode and then feed them instructions. Second, chances are since you were the one to set up the program, you would be the one to sign in and get the location data. Then you would call the authorities and say "according to my gps-enabled tracking software, the laptop is at location X," and they would send out a detective. If the detective is unwilling to accept your data, then you are parsing it wrong.

Re:But without a central service

[Lumpy]

You can mention MOSt of the laptop tracking apps out there and the response will be "Never heard of it..."

MOST non-technical law enforcement officers haven't heard of most tools used like this.

Hell most havent heard of linux or even understand what wifi is.

It will have as much traction as the open source CCTV systems and closed source CCTV systems do. Most of them blink when you hand them a CD with CCTV footage on it and the viewer app and they ask, "so I can play this on a DVD player?" 99.997% of all commercial security recorders record to a special format that is only viewable by the special player software.

your local storm troopers dont know squat past how to fill out the paperwork.

Re:But without a central service

[kabocox]

it may be more difficult for Adeona to gain traction with non-technical law enforcement officers.

Um, LEOs would actually love to have this preinstalled on laptops, desktops, cellphones, game pads, game consoles, and everything else under the sun. All they need is for you to file a police report that X device is stolen. The tricky thing is how easy would it be to make a LEO account so you could log in some where and give Joe Bob Police Officer tracking rights to that cell phone and ipod that were just stolen, but not the LCD tv, pc, and all the other toys.

Trust me, LEO would love for you to have your own tracking software/hardware installed on everything that you own because it makes there job so much easier.

I encrypted my hard drive

[Britz]

Now I am supposed to set up a second system the laptop defaults to boot into just to install this software? Not thx, not on my limited laptop hard drive. I mean the whole point of my completely encrypted laptop is so that I don't have to worry about it getting stolen, because they won't be able to use the data aginst me or my customers.

Re:Is something like this needed?

[sheph]

Yes because it's so difficult to set the jumper that clears the BIOS.

Re:But without a central service

[Zenaku]

The reason people commit $5000 property crimes is specifically because the police no longer bother to investigate.

If the police thoroughly investigated and had a high conviction ratio on even a relatively small number of crimes, people would be less likely to try it.

I don't disagree with you in the slightest on this point. Too bad we don't live in an ideal world with an unlimited supply of manpower. How much more would you be willing to pay in taxes to get every petty theft investigated?