Intel’s Kill Pill a Boon for Laptop Anti-Theft Security

Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
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At IDF yesterday, Intel showed off their solution for laptop anti-theft technology: the “Kill Pill.” It resides on the motherboard and combines traditional GPS and IP tracking methods with another, more drastic data protection measure.

The Intel Kill Pill can send a signal that scrambles the data on the drive, presumably through the deletion of encryption keys on the motherboard. …Intel executives explained that technology resides on the motherboard, so formatting the drive won’t help the criminal.
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Nice, but I'd like one that would fry the motherboard and turn it into a door stop. It is not the data that the thief is after most of the time.
 
Chiplg said:
Nice, but I'd like one that would fry the motherboard and turn it into a door stop. It is not the data that the thief is after most of the time.
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Yeah, but it's the data that the victim is going to worry about. Replacing laptop hardware is often trivial in comparison.
 
Rofl-Mic-Lofl said:
It's really good for corporate enviorments.
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Yeah, TPM and other features are definitely targeted at customers who value privacy of data over loss of hardware. Theft of laptops, even expensive ones, is minor compared to the potential damage of leaked details such as trade secrets or a product launch.

Just the same, is would be Uber[H]ardcore if they had it trigger the thermite instead :eek:
 
Terry Olaes said:
At IDF yesterday, Intel showed off their solution for laptop anti-theft technology: the “Kill Pill.” It resides on the motherboard and combines traditional GPS and IP tracking methods with another, more drastic data protection measure.
Click to expand...

I'd really like them to explain this in detail. If you format the drive, or even swap it out, you have to have some program that "phones home" to check for status and whether or not to kill the machine.

"of course the laptop has to be connected to the Internet to send all this information back to home base"

Tracking whether or not this program gets installed would be fairly easy. Heck, I would imagine that they only run on Windows anyway.
 
I still prefer a remote full destruction device.
 
Gott said:
This will teach you to backup.
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What does backing up have anything to do with this? Sure, backups are important but I was talking about theft of data; which often has far greater cost than that of the laptop it resides on. It's often not just a monetary cost either.
 
If the chip doesn't read drives that are not encrypted with that particular key, then the laptop would be a brick to the thief unless he replaced the entire mobo. And I'm guessing those lazy enough to steal to make money are also lazy enough (and probably stupid enough) to not be up for replacing a laptop mobo.
 
swiftB3 said:
If the chip doesn't read drives that are not encrypted with that particular key, then the laptop would be a brick to the thief unless he replaced the entire mobo. And I'm guessing those lazy enough to steal to make money are also lazy enough (and probably stupid enough) to not be up for replacing a laptop mobo.
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I wonder how they will address user upgradable drives then...
 
i think something that will auto shatter the lcd would be really intrestung to see, once the thief takes it online, it phones home if posted stolen. big FU comes up and screen shatters
 
Ockie said:
I wonder how they will address user upgradable drives then...
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"Thankfully, the Kill Pill effect can be easily recovered by using the management console to send the decryption keys back to the laptop."

It seems the keys don't only reside on the motherboard. Presumably, the web app could be used to encrypt any newly installed drive as well.
 
MorfiusX said:
I'd really like them to explain this in detail. If you format the drive, or even swap it out, you have to have some program that "phones home" to check for status and whether or not to kill the machine.

"of course the laptop has to be connected to the Internet to send all this information back to home base"

Tracking whether or not this program gets installed would be fairly easy. Heck, I would imagine that they only run on Windows anyway.
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They say it uses the combination of IP tracking and GPS tracking. I'd imagine if the laptop's offline, then you could trigger it via GPS instead.
 
Sounds like this technology is really only practical for businesses that often encrypt their laptops and need a way to better manage them. I don't see much of a use for home users where full disk encryption with preboot authentication probably provides more than enough security with little cost or complexity.
 
I think sony had an anti-theft measure that would destroy the laptop and all of the data (batteries), but I believe thay were recalled...
 
It's a seperate MBR basically in conjusction with the bios....the easy way around this is to flash the BIOS with your own. Most all Major manufacturers are including this in their BIOS's. check out

http://www.absolute.com

Computrace is the program name.
 
Apple could find stolen ipods and Iphones if the thief used Itunes. They wont though, They would rather you just buy a new one though.
 
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