Slashdot Mirror
Lenovo Service Disables Laptops With a Text Message
narramissic writes "Lenovo plans to announce on Tuesday a service that allows users to remotely disable a PC by sending a text message. A user can send the command from a specified cell phone number — each ThinkPad can be paired with up to 10 cell phones — to kill a PC. The software will be available free from Lenovo's Web site. It will also be available on certain ThinkPad notebooks equipped with mobile broadband starting in the first half of 2009. 'You steal my PC and ... if I can deliver a signal to that PC that turns it off, hey, I'm good now,' said Stacy Cannady, product manager of security at Lenovo. 'The limitation here is that you have to have a WAN card in the PC and you must be paying a data plan for it,' Cannady added."
From a stolen lapt
They were right - the revolution did not get televised. It was posted on YouTube instead. All in 120 characters. SLOOSH!
Pretty interesting security feature but not if your buddies get a hold of your cell phone.
My normal Slashdot cynicism wants to find a problem with this technology, but I can't so far, other than that a smart thief would just make sure to remove the WAN card and flash the BIOS (possibly with a new serial number or the remote disable, uh, disabled).
You win this time, Lenovo. *shakes fist*
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
This would excite me more if I could send a remote command that would detonate a small brick of C4 in the laptop. Why disable the computer when you can disable the thief?
The vast majority of thieves aren't even going to realise that this service is enabled. They certainly won't be deploying GPS jammers or reflashing the BIOS or opening the laptop up. And TFA article mentions that the whole point is to protect data by allowing users to shutdown access to an encrypted HDD that might still be open.
Thieves typically dont have the IQ to do any of that. When I was robbed, we nailed the thief not only from the video cameras that he looked right at to give us a awesome face shot, but he stole my daughters cellphone. He left it on all the time reporting his position. The cops had his ass in less than 24 hours.
Honestly thieves barely know how to use a screwdriver outside of prying a door or window with it. You seriously think one would do the delicate task of opening a laptop or flashing the bios? That's plain old funny.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It looks like the disable is handled in the BIOS, so either the GPS hardware is capable of receiving SMS texts while the laptop is hibernating, or the text is received when the BIOS boots up. Either way, you just have to send one text - your cell network provider will store and forward it to the receiver, it's just a regular text.
So you're telling me there will be a GSM module in the laptop that is constantly connecting to my network to wait for such a kill signal? Like say, a tracing bug? I know it'll be a pain for the thief but what about me? What a craptacular idea. Having my laptop become my personal GSM tracking device. Where have I been? Wait lets ask my "anti theft"-device.
and dismantling the entire laptop to reset the BIOS is actually FASTER than an OS reinstall..
Defective Logic
This feature doesn't seem to be aimed at stopping blackhats or organized criminals, two of the more "intelligent" varieties. No, this thing is meant to royally screw Joe Crackhead.
The feature doesn't appear as if it's ever going to stop a sophisticated high-tech criminal, naturally. Nor does this seem the intent. Identity thieves and data miners don't even need possession of the laptop, so no good there. Even then, the new feature is easily defeated. Organized criminals tend to know what they're doing as well, and any safety measure can be defeated by competence and planning. Still, they're both rare enough.
No, this sounds perfect for the two-bit junkie, the most common of criminals. Brick the laptop, especially remotely, and suddenly it's worthless for him to offload for his fix.
Do I get bonus points if I act like I care?
Yes, it'll probably be as secure as the Lenovo BIOS supervisor passwords.
(Hint: Supervisor password? Get a paperclip. The data pin goes to ground, boot laptop. Enter bios. Remove paperclip, set [new] supervisor password. It overwrites the old one. Which chip to mess with and which pins are which I leave to you and Google. Shouldn't take long.)
The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
This is exactly what we need in terms of laptop security. To you nay-sayers out there spinning doom and gloom scenarios about friends pranking your laptop with text messages, I can only assume that there is some secret passcode that you must send as part of the text-message to disable the machine. In fact, it should be convoluted, and hard to remember. Fortunately, as the proud owner of a brand-new Lenovo laptop, you can keep information like that stored right on the laptop, which you take everywhere.
It isn't quite that simple on a ThinkPad - the BIOS password is tied in to the TPM chip. And I really doubt your average thief is going to be building custom hardware and soldering it to the laptop mainboard...
How about setting up a simple script that periodically polls a remote site - say a web page under your control? If it can't reach it, or it reaches it and gets a default response, no action's taken. If on the other hand the page returns an innocuous looking kill code, a small program is run that disables the BIOS? On the server side, you'd be mailed the IP your stolen laptop connected from, which might give you some location info.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Just use a Sony battery. It will explode in their lap, sooner or later!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Thieves typically dont have the IQ to do any of that.
Remember, there are two kinds of thieves. There are amateurs and there are pros.
Amateurs are desperate people, usually because of an addiction of some sort, who steal whenever an opportunity presents itself. They see a car with an unlocked door, or an open window and they act. These people are the most common type of thieves, and will be caught with this technology.
Professionals steal things for a living. They are very calculated and know all of the security measures people use, and how to avoid them. This technology will not stop a professional. In fact, nothing will stop a professional. Professionals are why you buy insurance.
Fortunately, there aren't many professional thieves. When you think about it, it's very difficult to become a professional thief. This is because a pro cannot be desperate. They need to have time to study their target and come up with a plan of attack. This requires a person with a certain personality, that doesn't steal out of last resort, but steals for some other reason. There aren't many people like this in the world, and most of them are caught before they become very good at stealing.
My favorite piece of information about stopping thieves can be found here. (Warning, link contains flash video)
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Why not install Windows Vista, iTunes and the game Spore. That way you don't even need to send an SMS, just wait until code is activated progressively making the computer useless.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Exactly. Smart thieves perform a thorough risk/reward calculation and a lot of planning before they go for target. They are near impossible to catch.
I, for one, regularly steal rolls of toilet paper from work.
I'll never get caught because I put a lot of forethought into each coup and perfectionized my strategy over years. I only lift one roll at a time so it doesn't get noticed and so I can at any time pretend to be just carrying it around because I need to "clean my desk or something". Plus, I always drop the roll into my bag while sitting at my desk and without looking down. Eyes must be focussed on screen, innocent facial expression - nobody would ever notice from a distance that I'm performing a felony under the table in just that moment!
Bare the occassional accident (when I miss the bag and have to crawl under the table to recover the loot) I think I can safely claim that the perfect crime is possible and I have mastered it.