Stolen laptop running SETI(at)home recovered after contacting UC servers

[steve...]

Officers subpoenaed Quest Communications to determine the address where the stolen laptop logged onto the Internet. Within days, officers seized the computer and returned it to the rightful owners.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...531S42.DTL








Edit: spelling

[IronMac]

Sheesh...talk about stupid thieves. If I had a stolen laptop, first thing I'd do would be to rip out its hard drive.

[mrthuse]

Hoo-ray!

Let's hear it for our side!

[ztirffritz]

So we've used SETI@home to successfully locate un-intelligent life forms...

[onthedownlow]

[quote IronMac]Sheesh...talk about stupid thieves. If I had a stolen laptop, first thing I'd do would be to rip out its hard drive.
It's not that easy anymore (or at least is becoming that way)...with such tools that have been already shipping with new laptops (Dell uses AbsoluteTrace's solution) operate at the BIOS level...regardless of being flashed...the hard drive does not matter in that regards.

[IronMac]

Are you sure? i went to ComputeTrace's website and it sounds like it's just a piece of client software?

[davester]

[quote ztirffritz]So we've used SETI@home to successfully locate un-intelligent life forms...
Brilliant!! Oh, the irony!

[ho'ard]

[quote ztirffritz]So we've used SETI@home to successfully locate un-intelligent life forms... Been a while since I've laughed out loud at a forum post-- thanks.

[ho'ard]

Oh sheet, I agreed with davester on something-- what does this mean?

[onthedownlow]

[quote IronMac]Are you sure? i went to ComputeTrace's website and it sounds like it's just a piece of client software?
Yes. What you are seeing (that you can just outright purchase) is the regular, client software that only resides on the hard drive - just like any other 'lojack'-type software.

On Dell laptops, and this has been shipping for a year-and-a-half now, nearly...is that within the BIOS...there is a hidden agent for CompuTrace, that is not yet activated. In the BIOS, you have a couple of options, and you only get one chance to pick (if you choose anything at all). You can leave it entirely alone (never toggle any setting to it). You can enable the agent (but can never deactivate it) - and basically have to agree that any transmission sent to/from that computer could possibly be monitored by Absolute. Or the last option is disabling it altogether - which means you can never again activate it on that machine.

Most people just leave it as-is...never activating it, nor permenately disabling it. Once you do activate it though, it immediately does not work. You do have to purchase the software to install, and then that works like it would on any computer, but the extra step that it does is also 'really' activate the BIOS agent to communicate. If the hard drive is erased, the BIOS agent is still activated because it is basically at hardware level.