On 4 Feb 2014 at 17:12, David McSpadden wrote:
> Looking for some kind of LoJack software for my Laptops at work.
> Maybe even some better Whole drive encryption software.
Disturbing news about Computrace Lojack:
Absolute Computrace anti-theft software can be
remotely hijacked
Kaspersky Lab´s security research team
published a report confirming and demonstrating
that the weak implementation of anti-theft
software marketed by Absolute Software can turn
a useful defensive utility into a powerful
utility for cyberattackers.
In a stealthy way, this poor implementation
gives attackers full access to millions of
users' computers. The focus of the research was
the Absolute Computrace agent that resides in
the firmware, or PC ROM BIOS, of modern laptops
and desktops.
The major reason for this research project was
the discovery of the Computrace agent running
on several private computers of Kaspersky Lab´s
researchers and corporate computers without
prior authorization. While Computrace is a
legitimate product developed by Absolute
Software, some owners of the systems claimed
that they had never installed, activated or had
ever known about this software on their
machines. Most traditional pre-installed
software packages can be permanently removed or
disabled by the user; however Computrace is
designed to survive professional system cleanup
and even hard disk replacement.
Seen Here:
http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=16352
links to the Kaspersky Labs report in the first paragraph
of the above quoted text.
--
Angus Scott-Fleming
GeoApps, Tucson, Arizona
1-520-290-5038
Security Blog: http://geoapps.com/
