Mac Theft Recovery Software Tracks Thieves

Dubpal writes "Apple Macintosh users can now fit their machines with theft protection software that reports back on what a thief is doing with their computer, should it ever be stolen. The software, named "Undercover" allows users to report their Macs as stolen, causing the software to report back with IPs, screenshots and even a picture of the thief and his surroundings. In addition to this, Undercover begins faking hardware faults, displaying messages and even reading them aloud, alerting anyone around that the Mac's been stolen."

Utter Bullshit.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

From the Undercover FAQ: [orbicule.com]

Can I uninstall Undercover?

Yes, you can. If you haven't registered Undercover yet, you can uninstall Undercover by clicking the Uninstall button in the setup assistant that's part of the installation process. If you are a registered Undercover user, please contact us and we will send you uninstall instructions. During uninstall you will need the Administrator password, to prevent thieves from uninstalling Undercover.

Can Undercover be uninstalled by a thief?

For a thief, uninstalling Undercover is impossible. You can only uninstall Undercover if you know the Administrator password for the given mac.

Errrrr, impossible? What a stupid thing to say. Admin password recovery is trivial under os x. [intelliot.com] And a serious thief would reinstall os x before reselling.

In other words, this piece of software is useful only to:

1) Stupid people (who are reassured by a false sense of security)

2) People who want to spy on someone.

Oh, and anyone tempted to quote the following from the faq at me:

What if someone does a clean install of OS X on my machine?

You can prevent this by installing a firmware password. You can find the firmware password utility on your Mac OS X Tiger DVD (in /Applications/Utilities/ on the disc).

1) Bypassing the firmware is also trivial on Apple machines - all you have to do is add some Ram, and boot :-/

2) Noone has a firmware bios password.

Oh, and last thing - again from the FAQ

Is it possible for Undercover to work behind a firewall?

Yes, Undercover has the ability to autodetect any proxy or firewall settings used to connect to the Internet. Undercover collects and autodetects the necessary settings to access the Internet even if your firewall requires a password.[emph mine]

Bullshit. If they could do that, they would be selling that, not their little toy spyware app.

Re:Utter Bullshit.

[Bastian]

Good loord, youre one heck of a pessimist.

It's a $30 program that provides a far sight more chance of recovering a stolen laptop than nothing does. I, for one, think it's worth it, even if it would only have a chance of working work 1/10 of the time.

Which I would be willing to wager is a pretty low guess, given the tech-savviness of your average opportunist thief - someone who knows enough about computers to know how to reset the firmware password on a Mac is more than likely going to be tech-savvy enough to be able to get a better job than stealing computers off of tables at coffee shops.

Terrible idea..

[ivan256]

reading them aloud, alerting anyone around that the Mac's been stolen

Sounds like a guaranteed way to get your stolen mac smashed into unuseable pieces.

I've dealt with several stolen laptops.

[TwitchCHNO]

Sending you screenshots of the laptop being used is very useful, most security software "phones home" but only gives limited information, like the IP address of the machine (public IP if it is NATed).

The stolen laptops that law enforcement have contacted me about, have been largely pointless (as I work for an ISP and have access to the customer records). The perpetraitor or possesor of stolen goods is almost always at a hotel (wifi hotspot - what have you). Under US law - John Doe search warrant of a hotel isn't good enough.

You can't wake everyone in a hotel up and search thier rooms, the police need a specific name and room number, they can only search one room.

So thus screen shots, and knowing the identity of the person who's using their stolen laptop, improves your chances of recovery immensely.

Another Option

[Wolfout]

I administer a network of over 8000 computers, half of which are Apple computers. We use a program from http://www.absolute.com/ [absolute.com] called Computrace (Win/Mac) and it writes a piece to the BIOS that calls home REGARDLESS of OS reinstall. If removed, it will reinstall the software to call back home. Can it be stopped? Yes, but only with packet captures and other assorted goodies. Works really slick and it has been tested.