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Security Hardware

Phoenix Unveils Anti-Theft BIOS 458

Posted by timothy from the phoning-home dept.
linuxwrangler writes "According to articles at PC World, c|net, Internet Week and elsewhere, Phoenix Technology is introducing a new BIOS-based anti-theft system. Every time a TheftGuard equipped machine connects to the internet it pings a server at Phoenix which can instruct the machine to wipe its hard drive, report its location or disable itself. Given that most people don't want to have their every movement tracked and don't want someone else to have the power to wipe their drives, Phoenix figures that corporate clients are the prime customer. I just wonder who is liable when a company sells a surplus laptop on eBay but gets their inventory control screwed up and reports it as stolen..."
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Phoenix Unveils Anti-Theft BIOS More

Phoenix Unveils Anti-Theft BIOS

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  • Shortly after the BIOS was unveiled (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @11:56PM (#6054027)
    It was stolen. Police are investigating.

  • Replaceable Bios (Score:4, Insightful)

    by krisp ( 59093 ) * on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @11:57PM (#6054031) Homepage
    "Since TheftGuard's also in the BIOS, even if you remove the hard drive, we can still track or disable the machine, or wipe the drive," he said. Another trick that can eradicate anti-theft software -- running FDISK to reformat the drive -- also is foiled by TheftGuard's place in the HPA section of the hard drive, which is immune to simple reformatting tools.


    Last I checked, the BIOS was in a socket. What stops someone from swaping out the bios chip before turning on the box?

  • In the hands of the government (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Capt'n Hector ( 650760 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @11:57PM (#6054034)
    If this technology were to fall into the wrong hands (read government, RIAA, others) life could truely suck. I hope it never materializes in its current form, or we could have a rather large problem on our hands.

  • spoofing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by qortra ( 591818 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @11:59PM (#6054046)
    I wonder if that kind of system would be vulnerable to spoofing attacks? That would be a pretty nasty trick to play on someone; erase their hard drive by puting a phoenix spoofing server on their network.

  • Linux support? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CaptainAx ( 606247 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @11:59PM (#6054048)
    What happens if the user is running Linux? I can't see the bios pinging anything without the help of the host OS. Let alone erasing hard drives. Linux will become the thieves OS of choice. It's my OS of choice when looking at a computer that's been disabled by a virus.

    • Re:Linux support? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ag3n7 ( 442539 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:16AM (#6054136)
      Why do you view the BIOS as being able to do nothing without the host os?

      If the BIOS pings a server using the onboard nic before it tries to bootstrap to a drive, it would be very difficult to disable this...

      • Re:Linux support? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ColaMan ( 37550 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:33AM (#6054234) Journal
        er, but then you'd need a tcp/ip stack... (of sorts) and knowledge of your network, such as gateway addresses and your own IP, which could be fixed or dynamic via DHCP. And what do you ping? A fixed IP? A resolveable domain name? Fixed IP's are unlikely. Resolveable domain names require DNS, another thing that needs to be found out before you can ping your server.

        And god forbid if you don't actually *have* always-on internet dangling of the end of your network cable. What about people with cable modems with PPPoE? Authenticated proxy servers? Dial-up users?

        So yes, you could probably do something like this at boot if you cobble enough bits'n'pieces of software into your boot ROM - Phoenix has , it seems. But it'd probably only work in a fixed, known , stable environment. As mentioned before, possibly useful for corporations, not useful for the average home user.

        Just sounds like something else to go wrong to me. And go wrong catastrophically too.

  • I'm confused... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Patik ( 584959 ) * <cpatik AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @11:59PM (#6054050) Homepage Journal
    Is this Phoenix the web browser, or Phoenix the BIOS?

    Damn Mozilla!

  • Murphy's Law (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) * on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:00AM (#6054053) Journal
    I worked a sub-contracter job with a Dell contractor when I was 19/20 setting up Novell and Linux (very, very rare back then were new Linux installs that were actually purchased from commercial vendors - 4 years ago) rack servers. They had odd little Phoenix BIOS features that allowed a person to reset settings with the touch of a key upon boot up (it did have a "yes or no" prompt, though it didn't always work right). Dell also shipped a piece of software that was like Gateway's "Go Back" too, which erased all changes made to an array since last boot up. Yes, it was an actual Novell module which my contractor refuses to acknowledge ever existed now.

    I logged more hours going back to corporate offices and disabling these "features" and assisting their admins mine out old data then I did installing them. I had to stand there and be told how "God damned stupid all of these features are, and how stupid Dell is for using them, and how stupid you are for working with Dell!!!!". This is when I was 19 and had no more business/customer support experience/skills then a guy serving fries at McDonald's. The shit sucked.

    Murphy's Law dictates that the benefits of this idiotic and restrictive measure will be over shadowed by it's rare glitch and/or user incompetence which results in the loss of data.

    What happens when your battery dies on the SQl server, and the default settings enact this horrid "feature" and your hard drive is slicked? How bad will it suck when it happens to the CEO's assistant's laptop and she comes storming into your pitiful excuse for a NOC right before you were supposed to go on lunch?

    • Re:Murphy's Law (Score:5, Funny)

      by Soko ( 17987 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:08AM (#6054108) Homepage
      Remember, Murphy was an optimist.

      I'll wait for the first virus that activates this feature while spoofing the HW address.

      "Help, Phoenix, I've been STOLEN!!! Nevermind that guy I've got in chains and a gag, BLOW THIS PLACE UP!! NOW!!!"

      *BLAM*.

      One less Windows XP install in the world. Then again, this might be very useful as a LART...

      "What was you machine's name again? *Clickety-click*

      Soko

    • whaaaaa (Score:5, Funny)

      by lingqi ( 577227 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:22AM (#6054181) Journal
      How bad will it suck when it happens to the CEO's assistant's laptop and she comes storming into your pitiful excuse for a NOC right before you were supposed to go on lunch?

      From my experience, CEOs usually have very very fine assistants.

      Hey, maybe she is actually very technically capable, and consciously activated the erase-all-data feature just so have an excuse to talk to you, give you a chance to ask for her extension etc. =)

      Aww shutup and let me daydream.

  • Nice for cyber-assholes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jmv ( 93421 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:00AM (#6054057) Homepage
    Just imagine (no, not a beowulf!) someone breaking into the Phoenix site and instructing every HD to wipe itself. Now Nimbda looks like a joke...

  • Great.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by flatface ( 611167 ) * on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:00AM (#6054058)
    A stolen notebook can be a real threat to a business's security ...

    Aww! How do we expect to get an "early release" of Doom 4 now?

  • Federal use (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:00AM (#6054062) Homepage Journal
    I am surprised that federal departments/agencies have not developed this yet given the large numbers of laptops that go missing every year. Some of them even have classified data on them with the classic example being a certain former head of the CIA who was a little loose with his Powerbook.

  • Better Idea (Score:4, Interesting)

    by shr3k ( 451065 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:02AM (#6054071) Homepage
    Why not just encrypt the whole hard drive or the just sensitive data? To the thief, it's as good as it being erased.

    Besides, in either case, if the thief were an enterprising individual they could recover the data. Empty hard drive? Just do a low level scan. Encrypted hard drive? Spend lots of time and resources trying to crack the key.

    With that, why not go for the least destructive measure? Unless, of course, Phoenix is going for the Mission Impossible market -- this laptop will erase itself in 20 secs...

    • And keep the keys on a USB keychain! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by xixax ( 44677 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:34AM (#6054237)
      This is a far saner, less failure prone solution to "The Problem". I have already seen similar hardware solutions used by a friend who develops commercially sensitive commerce stuff, the laptop's a paperweight without the key-card.

      Only keep your keys on a something like a USB keychain rather than proprietary hardware. Then attach it to said employee's security pass so they don't leave it plugged into the laptop (or keep a log that emails you every time the laptop is shut down with the USB key left plugged in).

      But alas, I can see the PHBs of the world will demand the Mission Impossible version because it sounds cooler.

      Xix.

  • corporate clients (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HornyBastard77 ( 667965 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:02AM (#6054074)
    just a thought: how many corporate (or otherwise) IT admins would actually trust a system that enables someone beyond their control to remotely wipe their hard drive clean?

  • pings server... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Devil's BSD ( 562630 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:03AM (#6054079) Homepage
    what if you restrict the pings to the phoenix servers? i'm sure people will put up the IPs eventully.
    and what if i completely disconnect it from the internet?

  • I am a user of this new technology.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by ewhenn ( 647989 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:09AM (#6054110)
    I would like to report that as a beta tester this new bios has served me flawlessly. I have 100 percent faith that I will never suffer any loss of data on its behalf. For all you skeptics out there I can guarantee....

    <CARRIER DISCONNECTED>
  • (Without reading the article :)

    How long do you think it will take before someone figures out how to fake those 'wipe harddrive' commands? Looks like a smiple case of packet-sniffin' to me.

    "Hey d00d, watch what happens when I run THIS phoenix-nupe script...u r s0 0wn3d l0s3r"

    All together now:
    "I will place my trust and the fate of my harddrive in the hands of script kiddies"

    Reports my location as well??!?
    Huh?
    Why? Do they have guided missiles lined up for nasty computer thiefssess?

    • Re:oh dear oh dear (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ColaMan ( 37550 )
      Does anyone recall the low-level format utility that used to be built into hard drive controller ROMS?

      All we need now is some script kiddie to figure out the address of the "ZAP" routine in the Phoenix BIOS to jmp to, then the next outlook virus will cause hell. Change one instruction anywhere in your system's software (I guess boot sector is as good as any, before protected mode) to jump to that point, and all is lost.

      Why bother with your own devious erase code, when Phoenix thoughtfully provides one for

  • This is very sad (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:11AM (#6054120)
    Microsoft, the RIAA, and other such organizations have been misusing the words piracy and theft to such an extent lately that the instant i saw anti-theft in the headline my immediate, visceral reaction was to think okay, whatever this is, it has nothing whatsoever to do with preventing theft, and is probably just there to prevent you from fully using your computer, until a split second later when I remembered who Phoenix is, and that if phoenix were selling an "anti-theft" BIOS that would actually be what it is.

    -----
    I wonder if we're going to just kind of accidentally grow into some kind of wierd, reverse "newspeak", like in 1984, except instead of the government purposefully banning negative words, dodgy politicians, media outlets, and corporate officials will simply misuse all of the negative words there are until they've all lost their meaning in the public mind.

    [Sometime in the indeterminate future, New Palestinian Liberation Army breaks into Joe Archetype's house and robs him of all his belongings to sell on the black market to finance their bombing raids, and spraypaints PALESTINE FOREVER on the inside wall. Joe goes next door:]
    "Help me! My home has been breached by terrorists!"
    "Hm? What's the problem? If you have anti-war protestors in your home, can't you just ask them to leave?"
    "This is serious! They've stolen all my furniture!"
    "So.. they've made copies of all your furniture? Not very nice of them, i guess, but what's the big deal?"
    "ARGH!"
    "Maybe you can file a DMCA complaint, i guess."

  • Company needs better PR guy. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Ignominious Poltroon ( 654513 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:12AM (#6054124)
    "Over the last ten years laptops are starting to look the same," said Phoenix spokesperson David Tractenberg. "Something like TheftGuard can help to differentiate one product from another."

    Something like TheftGuard? It's like saying "TheftGuard is OK. But check out things that are like it, and you'll really be impressed."

  • hrm.. (Score:2)

    by delmoi ( 26744 )
    Personaly, I'd like to see this stuff set up to allow arbitrary code to be run after boot, so you can see just who stole your crap, and what they're doing with it.

    I wonder how hard it would be to 'whipe' the system clean, though? A simple cmos clear? is it 'always on' and pheonix simply ignores the problem unless you call up and complain? Of course, one could easily strip out all the goodies and leave the motherboard, which isn't even worth all that much these days anyway. Kind of like how a stolen car,

  • BIOS Hacking? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sergeant Beavis ( 558225 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:14AM (#6054134) Homepage
    Why not just rewrite the BIOS and flash it to disable or eliminate these features. Of course only your Uber Geek would be able to do this (certainly not I) and IMO, if he/she can do it, they've EARNED the laptop.

    Once this BIOS is hacked (assuming it can be), how long before copies of BIOS start going out over Kazaa?

  • Does this just stop people stealing computers, or will it stop them stealing product names also? ;)

    (ducks for cover)

  • Inventory Control (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Restil ( 31903 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:16AM (#6054139) Homepage
    I just wonder who is liable when a company sells a surplus laptop on eBay but gets their inventory control screwed up and reports it as stolen...

    Exactly the same thing that would happen if someone checked the serial number and found it was reported stolen. Police investigate, the owner provides a transaction history, the original owner discovers the mistake, charges get dropped, original owner gets sued for negligence.

    And should the HD get erased the FIRST TIME someone connects to the internet, it's not likely to create any serious data loss issues. The owner would probably think there's just something wrong with the computer. They'll complain, the problem will be discovered, etc etc.

    Of course, this theftguard assumes a number of things. Certainly the BIOS won't have any interaction with the internet unless the OS permits it. Any intellegent thief would wipe the drive and resinstall without ever booting it, let alone connecting it to the internet. There are many other ways to trace a stolen computer once it gets online, assuming the OS wasn't reloaded first. Having a machine "check in" isn't a bad idea in theory, but there's no particular advantage to using a hardware solution over a software one.

    -Restil

  • no, nope, no way, not ever! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by marcushnk ( 90744 ) <senectus@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:16AM (#6054141) Journal
    I cannot seriously see anyone accepting this tech.
    Corporations *might* but only if they can set it to poll THIER servers, and have it under their control.

    Personally though.. it scares me that MS and their "Trusted Computing" scheme Might force this onto the users..

    There is only three people/organizations that should have the ability to remove/restrict "owned" things... Me (the owner), The LAW (only after following the judicial system) or Judge Dredd.

  • Problems With This Idea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Shackleford ( 623553 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:18AM (#6054150) Journal
    From the PCWorld article:

    When a TheftGuard-equipped system is stolen, the owner provides instructions through the TheftGuard web site. The next time the lost computer connects to the Internet, TheftGuard is activated and either disables the machine, wipes its hard drive, or transmits information on the physical location where the signal originates.

    The problem with this seems to be that TheftGuard only performs actions after the stolen computer is connected to the Internet. And by the time that happens (if that happens) it's too late. My understanding is that when computers are stolen, the data on them is what's sought, as it is what's most valuable. And once the data is in the wrong hands, it's too late. The data on it can be copied to another place, and perhaps individual hardware components can be removed and sold. Am I wrong about anything here?

  • Chapter 11 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LauraW ( 662560 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:18AM (#6054153)
    And, er, what happens when Phoenix goes out of business? Shades of DIVX [onlineinc.com]?

    Laura

  • Horrible conspiracy, evil company, dark secrets, omgtheyownyou yadda yadda blah blah This sounds like a great idea and I would the first one in line for a mobo equipped with such a BIOS.

  • We have been using a similar product for years (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dejohn ( 164452 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:19AM (#6054167) Homepage
    In my organization, we have been using Computrace [computrace.com] which serves the same function. The software installs into the computer's boot sector and is nearly invisible if you don't know to look for it. It contacts the Computrace NOC frequently over IP or modem and reports it's IP address (or caller ID). We now have a pretty nice log of where all our laptops go. The software isn't capable to destroying or disbling the PC, but it's invisibility and reporting features are enough to make it useful.

    Computrace reports having retrieved a number of stolen computers based on the data reported by the software. It's definitely useful for any corporate IT department!
  • So I won't be buying any machines that use a Phoenix BIOS.
    What's new?

  • Phoenix, meet dd (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Soko ( 17987 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:24AM (#6054189) Homepage
    "Since TheftGuard's also in the BIOS, even if you remove the hard drive, we can still track or disable the machine, or wipe the drive," he said. Another trick that can eradicate anti-theft software -- running FDISK to reformat the drive -- also is foiled by TheftGuard's place in the HPA section of the hard drive, which is immune to simple reformatting tools.

    Any hard disk forensics person will tell you the wonders of dd and netcat [rajeevnet.com] working together. Adjust the dd parameters a tad, and the HBA is no longer a problem. If they think the bad guys don't have access to this knowledge, they're as FDISKed as they seem.

    This is seriously stupid, so it must have come from marketing, not the techies.

    Soko

  • Ahhh well... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by TallEmu ( 646970 )
    ... I guess anything with Phoenix BIOS can't safely be used for mission-critical systems then.

    I remember reading an interesting article somewhere about a guy who got his mac back by using some remote software on there. It reported its IP address every time the theif connected to the net and as I recall, the guy was uploading scripts to it and so forth to get it to do various things to help recover the box.

    I remember thinking at the time that this was a neat idea, but having a third-party with the powe

  • Monopoly seldom talked about (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zakezuke ( 229119 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:28AM (#6054206)
    I hear people here rant about the evils of microsoft, which I will be the first to agree they are a big evil, but seldom do I hear about the BIOS monopoly.

    I'm i'm not mistaken, award, ami, and pheonix are owned by the same company. Atleast Award and Pheonix seem to be at anyrate. I could be wrong about this, but this would be due to the lack of attention on this little piece of software you are required to buy.

    Unlike the Microsoft software where you at least (all though arguably) have a choice to buy a system without it... the same can't be said about the BIOS. Now they have a good product... worth paying for, though I wish they would have added some more *nix like features quite frankly, and it's a pain when one motherboard has for example the Symbios boot for cheep scsi cards feature, where another motherboard with the same make bios is missing that feature, dispite the fact that it's been shown this could be added with ease, and heaven forbid any end user requests for these features present in one and not the other.

    So, when Pheonix decides to be most irrating and implement systems like this, who are you going to turn to? I honestly don't know the actual cost of the bios licensing and it's cost per PC motherboard, but I'd wager to guess it's pretty cheep... based on what i've seen in old computer shopers, some companies were charging like $20 a chip. I assume it's a sub $20 per chip fee. I personaly am happy to pay it, as these companies pretty much became comercialy viable because they undersold Compaq and IBM, and dispite their flaws they are the lesser of the big blue and wannabe blue.

    This is one of those products that you pretty much either *assume* you have legit license for, based on faith that the motherboard maker. For your average geek, it's pretty much a simple task to establish wether or not you have license for the product.

    It's also one of those products that the end user doesn't typicaly pirate. Pirated, or rather, bootleged bios are typical found on the cheepest motherboards available. I do not feel that this is the solution as it's not typicaly the end user pirating their product, it's little no name companies that buy their product bulk from the likes of PC Chips and resell them without a licensed bios.

    *SOLUTION* why not ask for cash? You may say what you will about these companies, but unless the freebios projects mature enough there isn't really much of an alternative, and it is a product worth paying for as it does make the system work, and i'm all for supporting them as they pretty much are, in part, responcible for the whole clone market, until something better comes out. If their product is indeed typicaly sub $20.00 for that little holographic sticker, this is a VERY small price to pay for updates. During y2k, they would have made a KILLING on all those cheep ass funky motherboards if they were able to provide on their website the correct bios based on it's ID number, explain that you need to pay $20.00 to download it, rather then the more foolish end users who bought copies of that Symantic product to compensate for only level 2 complience.

    The alternative is getting bad press about some little old lady who bought a system on good faith, who in good faith bought a system, getting her hard drive wiped because of someone else bootleging a product she doesn't understand exists.

  • For the paranoid (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mj01nir ( 153067 ) * on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:29AM (#6054209)
    Yup, time to tighten up my outbound firewall rules.
  • On how something like this would actually work. It would almost certainly be restricted to:

    1) Onboard ethernet
    a) Plugged in at boot, during PXE/BOOTP/etc.
    b) On a network with DHCP, or at least forgiving gateway routers.
    2) A modem that attempts to dial an 1-800 number or some such during boot.

    Modern OS (i.e. not Win9x/ME) don't invoke the bios for anything major after the initial bootup; by the time they get the network settings enabled, the bios is left behind. (PPPoE, VPN, static IP, whatever).

    Does

  • I shouldn't tell this secret, but... (Score:5, Informative)

    by sludg-o ( 120354 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:34AM (#6054240)
    It always amazes me when some student at my campus steals a lab computer and doesn't think that our DHCP server will let us know the next time it gets plugged back in to our network. Over half our stolen computers get recovered that way. Just last night, one was stolen (end of the academic year is always bad for theft) and the kid decides to plug it in in his room. He really should have waited 5 more days to use it and he would have graduated on time. Now he is facing expulsion. Idiots!

  • Uhmmm problem. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mark-t ( 151149 ) <markt AT nerdflat DOT com> on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:34AM (#6054243) Journal
    People who steal computers don't steal them to use them, they steal them to sell them to other, otherwise completely innocent people.

    Now, just how upset would you be if someone came to your door and said that the laptop you bought on eBay last week was stolen? Granted, you'd try to contact the seller to get your money back, but if he's been even the slightest bit clever about things, you might never find out who it was. Further, even if you *DO* find out who the guy is, you still won't get your money back because he'll probably be doing jailtime in the very near future, if he isn't already. Of course, you can legally sue him, but just how do you think you're going to collect?

    Not that I'm saying that theft should be ignored... it shouldn't. But doesn't anyone think that efforts might be better spent on technologies that might enable them to catch the criminals *BEFORE* they exploit someone else?

  • What happens... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nametaken ( 610866 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:38AM (#6054261)
    ...if my network connection is down? Will my machine refuse to boot?

  • Hmmm.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mckeever ( 410646 ) <robm@@@mac...com> on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:38AM (#6054265) Homepage Journal
    I think some of the technical folks on here have missed the point: A 'ping' signal doesn't have be the regular ICMP ping. It could be any sort of protocol that requests an echo back from the target.

    I do think that an awful lot of people on here are getting the point: What happens when I, mister malicious black
    hat decides to spend a little money on research material and aquires, by one menas or another, a few of these units for destructive testing and reverse engineering? Now I can spoof the Pheonix server on any given LAN and - proof - Merry Christmas, Bob's your uncle!

    I can see the military and paramilitary organizations liking something like this. I'd also be surprised if they don't have something similar under lock and key right now. If I recall, most of the concern over the laptops wasn't over the data on them, but more over how the security procedures when awry. There were one or two that went missing from internal areas that wouldn't have been equipped for travel, but they likely wouldn't have been protected by this system either.

    Personally, I think people fall into one of two categories:

    1) The stupid/ignorant. These people wouldn't buy this BIOS anyway. They're gonna be hooped when their data gets lost/stolen.

    2) The paranoid. These people are probably already using strong encryption, finger print scanners, etc. They're gonna be hooped as well... unless they were paranoid enough to do regular backups! Admittedly, the thief won't have access to the data, but I suspect most of the stolen laptops get wiped shortly after the thief copies the porn off for his own amusement anyway.

    I see IT managers loving this because it covers their arses. I see the users either not needing it or not liking it. ...just my 3 cents worth (Canadian funds :-)

    -Rob

  • What authentication is used (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:48AM (#6054326)
    I see all these posts about sniffing and other attacks but how about the question of how Theftguard's website actually authenticates that YOU are the owner of the pc being reported stolen. What if the data needed is ON the pc or some other easily bypassed measure. This is doomed.

  • Not bad but kinda cheep. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mrmeval ( 662166 ) <.moc.oohay. .ta. .lavemcj.> on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:49AM (#6054334) Journal
    It's cheep security, None of the peripherals seem to be protected and that's the meat of any system.

    If you buy a used PC with that system in it you should have the ability to contact the maintainer of the system to work out ownership transfer. There should be no fee for this.

    Prediction by MrPredicter:

    One week after deployment a copy of the BIOS will be posted to usenet, Seventy Six Milliseconds after that it's cracked, patched and offered on WareZ sites with instructions on how to burn, unplug or desolder and install the new chip.

    Fixing the above, off the top of my head:

    Hardwired into the motherboard is a distributed encryption device that holds all of the motherboard chips, drives, ram and compatible installed cards in an inactive state until a USB or other device is insterted. The unlocking device needs to have been activated with a PIN prior to insertion so that the secret key inside can encrypt a challenge response with the devices in the computer. The device in the computer should also do realtime transparent encryption of the drives and offer network encryption as it would be trivial to add. Internal keys in the device would be the provence of the local IT security staff, they could not be changed by the user.

    One nice feature of this method is that, with a well setup OS each users network presence (data, settings, drives ect) could be transparently encrypted, each PC would be generic with no user or company data stored on the PC just on the network. Other networkable protocols could be implemented. I think Linux is close to part of this done in software.

    The device would need to be distributed, that way an attacker would have to compromise every device in the computer to make any use of the computer. Even the ram would not be of use.

    It would be possible to do this in a compatible way to protect the addons use extenders/risers that contain the encryption receivers which would be epoxied to circuit cards, drives and ram would slightly reduce cost and void warranties but allow easier upgrades by just adding a riser. The other method is to order specially modified hardware and only the Motherboard needs this. Yes, there are all sorts of drawbacks mostly stability issues and the CPU is stil not protected from theft.

    Isn't there some sort of specification for all this, this didn't just come to me a vacuum, well I vacuumed it up, most probably from the cypherpunks mailing list but can't remember.

    Total added cost to the PC, too much:

    Just hire a damned good degreed security specialist and a retain a good physical security consultantcy and let them work with a team of people to implement a reasonable security system and stick with it. Add to that good training for the security people and rigorous *reoccuring* background checks. Also a mid/upper level management that actually listens to the experts in this is needed, eviserate the dead weight as needed.

  • here's another:

    disgruntled fired admin, on his last day, instructs firewall servers to redirect pings to phoenixbios.net: boom! every computer in the company gets an empty harddrive ;-P

  • Introducing a single point of failure (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gotan ( 60103 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @12:55AM (#6054363) Homepage
    So if an evil minded Hax0r gets his hands into Phoenix' server, or manages to get at the keycodes and to redirect the trafic, he can wipe all of any corporations laptops if they adopted this scheme?

    That means they're introducing a risc to get their business fscked (or rather formatted) if they depend on those laptops and need to connect them to the internet. I think that's a high price to pay to protect against the theft of a few laptops.

    Also it doesn't even work: maybe it's hard to change the BIOS chip (given a replacement BIOS and the right equipment it should be doable), but if the thief is really interested in just the data he simply reads it without conecting the laptop to the internet, or he even removes the harddisk altogether and analyses its contents.

    If they really want to protect their data they should go for encrypted filesystems or at least encrypt the sensible data so only authorized persons can access it, problem solved.

  • Wow, to be THAT hacker (Score:4, Funny)

    by sterno ( 16320 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @01:05AM (#6054416) Homepage
    Somebody hacks into the company and flips the kill switch on all the bios's. Thousdands of laptops, most of them not backed up routinely, are wiped. Ouchy.
  • As it stands now, this looks like a bad idea, as expressed multiple times by many of the comments. Besides the technical problems, to me it points to a larger problem that is growing every day: Private businesses trying to provide law enforcement.

    Assuming they could get past all the potential technical hurdles regarding security and authentication, we still are basically saying that a private company can alter/damage the contents of a computer legally without any coordination with law enforcement. That scares me.

    Basically, this is sort of a computer version of low-jack. Which is cool. But in this version, it would be as if you could call up the low-jack people, have the car disabled, get a report of where the car is and take care of the matter yourself. Of course, as far as I can tell, low-jack doesn't work that way. My roommate can't find my documentation for the low-jack, make a phone call and leave me stranded just to play a joke.

    I'd like to see this system in place. I for one sure would be happier to know that if somebody stole one of my laptops there was some method out there to recover it. But that's a job for the police, not some big business. Sure, Phoenix can build tools that I might buy that would assist the police, but I'd want to be dang sure that they can't do anything to one of my machines until the cops tell them it's all right. And the cops can't tell them that until I've filed a police report and asked them to do it.

    Yes, I know that law enforcement has a long way to go to really get a handle on computer based crimes, and at the moment are pretty impotent in catching the bad guys. But what I don't like seeing is big faceless corporations coming in and picking up the slack.

  • Lot's of noise but .... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by louisfreeman ( 595193 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @02:17AM (#6054674)
    a computer gets stolen, thieve removes the harddrive, sticks it into a second computer (with an older BIOS) ..... and reads the disk. How does this Hot New Protection from Phoenix protect business information/secrets ? a full-disk encryption seems to be more effective

  • Wipe it's drive?! Oh come on... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bowie J. Poag ( 16898 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @03:07AM (#6054862) Homepage

    Oh gee, like thats gonna be REAL popular with people.. How long will it take an enterprising young 14-year-old to write a little hack that sits on a network, opens promiscuous mode on a NIC, watches for calls to Phoenix's verification IP, and answers back with a smurfed "AAGH! DANGER WILL ROBINSON!" reply before Phoenix, Inc. has a chance to?

    And I, for one, don't want the operation of my machine to be wholly dependent upon whether or not it's connected to a public network.

    Stupid idea, if you ask me.

    You want PC security? A note on the wall that says "If you screw with this machine, I'll know, and i'm quite capable of kicking your ass, having you fired, or both." will do the trick nicely. :)

    Seriously..When I was in HS, the guy who ran the computer room was massively anti-piracy. If he even *suspected* you were using pirated shit in the lab, he'd confiscate your disk and literally staple it to the wall. Got the point across.

  • Security measures (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Advocadus Diaboli ( 323784 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:46AM (#6055182)
    I don't think that you'll need an "anti-theft BIOS". At the moment I find enough security features inside the BIOS:
    • Simple password protection
    • Boot only when a special USB memory stick is plugged in
    • Access to system requires a Smartcard with a PIN (that's a feature of my employers PC products)
    • Harddisk password funcitions

    I think the main problem with computer theft is not the loss of some more or less cheap piece of hardware. That can be replaced easily. The major damage is that you'll lose your data. But security measurs like the harddisk security features that are stored in a hard disks firmware make it very hard to get access to the data. Especially considering that a normal thief is not an IT expert.
    If industrial espionage is concerned then your enemy has enough knowledge to do bad things when he has real phyical access to the machine. So a BIOS won't help much to keep an expert away from my data if I don't do additional measures.
    What would be really helpful against data loss is a BIOS that goes on strike if I don't do backups of my data frequently... but that leads us to the problem that there is no easy way of backing up 80 Gigabytes on a 3.5 inch floppy... :-)

  • As effective as the coded car radio. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by aaaurgh ( 455697 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @05:10AM (#6055238)
    Let's face it, the thief who steals it won't have the problem, it'll be the poor sap daft enough to buy it at the end of the chain. Just like the stolen coded (i.e. not-working) car radios which get sold at the local pub/garage sale/car boot sale - who's going to have all the necessary gear to check it at the time of purchase.

    By the time the buyer realises, the thief is long gone - it just moves the problem, doesn't eliminate it. Just like the car immobiliser law brought in here in Western Australia - all cars have to have them. So now we get people being attacked near their cars or in the house so the thief can get the keys.

  • Meanwhile, in the secret Cavern... (Score:3, Funny)

    by elpapacito ( 119485 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @09:13AM (#6056033)
    Some guy in the Phoenix marketing has a brilliant idea ! Let's "market" the bios so that every year the user is forced to buy a "security upgrade" and let's call it a "security feature". At worse we'll blame either pirates like some other big company does, or we'll blame hackers. I hear the master hacker is hiding in caves...

    It seems obvious to me they want to extract more money out of customers by crippling the bios rather then by really improving it.

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