Free UW software tracks stolen laptops

The worst thing that could happen to that new laptop you just bought would be for someone to steal it.

The next worst thing? Failing to install simple and free software that can track the stolen laptop and tell you where it is.

Researchers from the University of Washington just debuted a free tracking tool called Adeona that helps identify where a lost laptop computer is. The theft protection tool can be found at http://adeona.cs.washington.edu.

The software not only provides a virtual watchdog on your machine – reporting the laptop’s location when it connects to the Internet – but does so without letting anybody but you monitor its whereabouts.

That last feature is different from the existing commercial products on the market that try to do the same thing, said Tadayoshi Kohno, a UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering.

“All the other commercial products now send your location to a third-party that can establish where the computer is (before it’s stolen),” Kohno said. That has created problems, such as subpoenas in divorce battles where one side uses that information to develop a trail of “bread crumbs” to be used against the other party in court, Kohno said.

Kohno worked on the new tool with Thomas Ristenpart, a summer student at the UW last year; Gabriel Maganis, a graduate of the UW computer engineering program; and Arvind Krishnamurthy, a researcher in computer science and engineering at the university.

It was important, Kohno said, to also develop a way to prevent others from locating the laptop before it was stolen, and to ensure that only the owner could track down the location of it after it’s stolen.

Adeona (the name comes from the Roman goddess of safe returns) uses an encrypted profile of the user’s name and the laptop’s current location. It periodically sends out the location – expressed in IP (Internet Protocol) address – to an open storage network called OpenDHT. Kohno said OpenDHT is very much like the dispersed network system called Bit Torrent, used by many Web regulars to find and download music and movies.

If the laptop is stolen, only the owner can access the machine’s OpenDHT data and track down its last known location, Kohno said. That data will identify the Internet service provider used by the person who is operating the stolen laptop. Kohno said the owner of the lost computer should contact police with that information, who can work with the ISP to track down the suspect.

The Apple notebook version of the Adeona service also can grab photos, using the laptop’s built-in camera, and ship those to the owner. That feature is not yet available on PC versions.

The group is developing a version of the tool for the iPhone, Kohno said.