 AVDRespice, Adspice, ProspicePremium
join:2003-02-06
Onion, NJ | The right way to track a stolen laptop »www.networkworld.com/newsletters···?hpg1=bn
quote:
According to Marinello, a student on campus had his laptop stolen and the university police paid the IT department a visit for help in tracking it down.
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Between the university's Cisco RADIUS server and location capabilities in its Trapeze Networks WLAN, the IT department was able to help track down the laptop and the thief.
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Campus police obtained a court order, went into the residence hall and retrieved the laptop. "The kid got the laptop back, the thief got arrested, and a trial date was set," Marinello says. He adds that it turns out that the suspect was also wanted for theft at other schools in New Jersey.
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standard disclaimers apply. |
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 swhx7Premium
join:2006-07-23
Elbonia | It's admirable that the IT department was willing to put in the resources to help this guy.
Of course, MAC addresses are completely spoofable. This recovery succeeded because the thief didn't know how to cover his tracks or didn't bother. |
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| said by swhx7:It's admirable that the IT department was willing to put in the resources to help this guy. Of course, MAC addresses are completely spoofable. This recovery succeeded because the thief didn't know how to cover his tracks or didn't bother. Nah, the thief was an idiot for stealing a laptop from student that attended same university. |
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AVDRespice, Adspice, ProspicePremium
join:2003-02-06
Onion, NJ | said by silentlooker:said by swhx7:It's admirable that the IT department was willing to put in the resources to help this guy. Of course, MAC addresses are completely spoofable. This recovery succeeded because the thief didn't know how to cover his tracks or didn't bother. Nah, the thief was an idiot for stealing a laptop from student that attended same university. and connecting to the university wifi
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standard disclaimers apply. |
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rmdir
join:2003-03-13
Chicago, IL | reply to AVD
That's why I always enable a power on password on my laptops. You may steal my computer, but guess what-you won't be using it. |
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| said by rmdir:That's why I always enable a power on password on my laptops. You may steal my computer, but guess what-you won't be using it. Take 15 min to disable that. Take out bios battery, wait 3 min, put it back and everything back together and power on the laptop. No more password. |
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rmdir
join:2003-03-13
Chicago, IL | Really? I was not aware of that. Resetting the BIOS will erase the PW? Thing is, if you are smart enough to do that you are probably not stupid enough to be a thief in the first place. |
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| reply to AVD
That's like shooting fish in a barrel.
Whats hard about finding a mac address on a campus network? |
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 KilroyPremium,MVM
join:2002-11-21
Ann Arbor, MI | reply to silentlooker
said by silentlooker:Take out bios battery, wait 3 min, put it back and everything back together and power on the laptop. No more password. Not so with all laptops. Plus with todays laptops you should be getting Drive Lock or a similar technology, which password protects the hard drive. No password, no boot and no data. Easy on and easy off. Moving the drive to a different machine does not provide access.
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When will the people realize that with DRM they aren't purchasing anything? |
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| said by Kilroy:said by silentlooker:Take out bios battery, wait 3 min, put it back and everything back together and power on the laptop. No more password. Not so with all laptops. Plus with todays laptops you should be getting Drive Lock or a similar technology, which password protects the hard drive. No password, no boot and no data. Easy on and easy off. Moving the drive to a different machine does not provide access. If you take out the battery on laptop what keeps bios from resting? It works on same principal as desktop motherboard. Regarding drive lock, it can be cracked, it all depends how long time you will to spend on it. |
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| said by silentlooker:said by Kilroy:said by silentlooker:Take out bios battery, wait 3 min, put it back and everything back together and power on the laptop. No more password. Not so with all laptops. Plus with todays laptops you should be getting Drive Lock or a similar technology, which password protects the hard drive. No password, no boot and no data. Easy on and easy off. Moving the drive to a different machine does not provide access. If you take out the battery on laptop what keeps bios from resting? It works on same principal as desktop motherboard. Regarding drive lock, it can be cracked, it all depends how long time you will to spend on it. not on ALL systems. ive actually tryd it on a few. in most cases it does not clear the bios password. as for laptops, it depends on the laptop. ive got an IBM that you cant do that with.
as for drive encryption. i have my drives encrypted with truecrypt good luck breaking that. |
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| reply to silentlooker
There is zero chance of cracking a properly encrypted hard drive (hardware based) with a strong password in this context, assuming the computer was shut down. And even if was not shut down, you may be able to access data, but the next time it is shut down, it will be locked for good. Far easier to steal another unprotected laptop, or swap in a new drive. In fact, outside of a couple of government agencies, it isn't going to be cracked. More importantly, for those of us who work with data covered by the various privacy laws, such encryption is a safe harbor under the law. Since these were students, who cares, but anyone who works in finance, healthcare or insurance (especially healthcare or health insurance), it is simply foolish not to PROPERLY use encrypted drives due to the penalties and liability. |
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AVDRespice, Adspice, ProspicePremium
join:2003-02-06
Onion, NJ | reply to silentlooker
said by silentlooker:said by Kilroy:said by silentlooker:Take out bios battery, wait 3 min, put it back and everything back together and power on the laptop. No more password. Not so with all laptops. Plus with todays laptops you should be getting Drive Lock or a similar technology, which password protects the hard drive. No password, no boot and no data. Easy on and easy off. Moving the drive to a different machine does not provide access. If you take out the battery on laptop what keeps bios from resting? It works on same principal as desktop motherboard. Regarding drive lock, it can be cracked, it all depends how long time you will to spend on it. Just slap in a new hard drive... the windows key is on a sticker on the bottom.
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standard disclaimers apply. |
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AVDRespice, Adspice, ProspicePremium
join:2003-02-06
Onion, NJ
1 edit | reply to South LA
said by South LA :
There is zero chance of cracking a properly encrypted hard drive (hardware based) with a strong password in this context, assuming the computer was shut down. And even if was not shut down, you may be able to access data, but the next time it is shut down, it will be locked for good. Far easier to steal another unprotected laptop, or swap in a new drive. In fact, outside of a couple of government agencies, it isn't going to be cracked. More importantly, for those of us who work with data covered by the various privacy laws, such encryption is a safe harbor under the law. Since these were students, who cares, but anyone who works in finance, healthcare or insurance (especially healthcare or health insurance), it is simply foolish not to PROPERLY use encrypted drives due to the penalties and liability.
You can also reformat drives to remove some software based encryption schemes.
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standard disclaimers apply. |
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 rawwhidePremium
join:2000-09-03
The Sticks
 ·AT&T DSL Service
| reply to silentlooker
said by silentlooker:said by Kilroy:said by silentlooker:Take out bios battery, wait 3 min, put it back and everything back together and power on the laptop. No more password. Not so with all laptops. Plus with todays laptops you should be getting Drive Lock or a similar technology, which password protects the hard drive. No password, no boot and no data. Easy on and easy off. Moving the drive to a different machine does not provide access. If you take out the battery on laptop what keeps bios from resting? It works on same principal as desktop motherboard. Regarding drive lock, it can be cracked, it all depends how long time you will to spend on it. Most laptops store the BIOS password in a special chip, sometimes even hidden under the CPU, that is not affected when the rest of the BIOS settings are reset. This makes the removal of a BIOS password on a laptop almost impossible. The only option in most cases is to replace the chip which is quite expensive and risky procedure and, of course, not supported by the manufacturers.
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To talk much and arrive nowhere is the same as climbing a tree to catch a fish. |
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 angussfPremium
join:2002-01-11
Tucson, AZ
kudos:3 | reply to thedragonmas
said by thedragonmas:as for drive encryption. i have my drives encrypted with truecrypt good luck breaking that. Of course, that would have made the laptop unbootable, in which case the thief would have sold it on Craigslist rather than connect it to the campus network (which is what allowed the laptop to be recovered).
If you plan to have your laptop stolen, it might be better to leave the laptop bootable and just encrypt a data partition.
Unfortunately Windows makes it very difficult to keep all your data on a different partition and still boot.
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Angus S-F
GeoApps, Tucson, Arizona, USA
»geoapps.com/
»www.linkedin.com/in/angussf
»geoapps.blogspot.com/ |
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