[OLUG] Program idea.

[Tim Russell]

It's been done, but it's a commercial product - a Google search (I /highly/
recommend Google!) for "stolen laptop modem" came up with a story on
www.thetrip.com that mentions it - CyberAngel by Sentry Software
(www.sentryinc.com).  Of course, it's for Windows machines...

I would imagine that this /could/ be useful on a Linux box, but I would also
imagine that anyone who stole a linux laptop would boot it, see the login
prompt, then shut it down and wipe the hard drive.  The chances that they
would hook the modem to a phone line on the first bootup are about nil, I'd
say.

The other problem, of course, is that this would just about /have/ to be
commercialware - you'd need an 800 number for it to call, and you'd have to
have realtime- or near-realtime ANI services on that 800 number to get the
phone number it called from - else how would you know where it was located?
Those kind of services don't come cheap, and you'd need CPE to support it as
well.

I suppose West Interactive, where I used to work, would be the cheapest
place to contract to implement it - dunno if they'd have modem support, but
the app could dial them, pause a few seconds, then DTMF an identification
number for the laptop in question.

Good idea, though!

Tim

-----Original Message-----
From: Vincent <vraffensberger at home.com>
To: OLUG <olug at bstc.net>
Date: Monday, January 03, 2000 11:26 PM
Subject: [OLUG] Program idea.


>I have an idea for a program, but I'm not a programmer, so I'll share
>it...
>
>I know it's difficult to come up with an idea that hasn't been done
>already, but I've looked everywhere for a program which will run
>transparently on a computer and connect to a server occasionally and
>announce it's presence and some other useful data.
>
>This would provide a method to locate and track stolen computers.  The
>client app will wait for an internet connection and connect to the
>server app at set intervals.  It can probably also submit some info like
>it's MAC address, current username, netbios name and even some current
>routing information.  The server side app will log all the connections
>and query them daily.  If any systems are connecting from outside a
>defined set of addresses, the details can then be e-mailed to the net
>admin.
>
>I know it wouldn't be fool proof.  If the drive is formatted or the
>system never connected to the internet, it'll be useless.
>
>The Distributed.net program almost does this accidentally.  They used to
>assist people in finding stolen computers, but I haven't been able to
>get any response from them at all.  I even posted a question about it on
>their news server and it was moderated out.  Since the distributed.net
>clients are open-source, it could form a starting point.  It already has
>proxy support, net detection, and ports to nearly every platform.
>
>Does this sound like a good idea?  Anyone?
>
>--
>"Go away before I replace you with a very small shell script!"
>
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