Anti-Theft Technology for Laptop Security from Intel

Laptop theft is an increasing phenomena in urban India particularly in student hostels and bachelor accommodations. Intel came up with an in-built feature that will shut down the laptop and make it useless for the thief remotely. Though you may not recover the lost laptop, it will act as an deterrent for a possible theft.

This intelligent laptop security technology is built into select 2nd generation Intel® Core™ and 2nd generation Intel® Core™ vPro™ processor families. This technology is built into the processor, so this will be activated even before that startup.  By remotely activating it, we can shut the pc. It will work even without internet as it is hardwired and as it starts before startup, it is tamper proof.

There is an additional feature which will alert anyone who starts the laptop that the product they are trying to use is stolen one.

When i was discussing about this technology with my colleagues, many were quite skeptical about the feature being used as a loophole for developing viruses.  A friend commented that “Once the remote shut-off has been hacked, there is little to stop someone to set up a iterative program that could continue to dial-up CPUs and shut them down.”

Another one commented that it will give an opportunity to U.S. government to shut down whatever computers they can, whenever they want to.

But i see it as an advantage as this hardware-based technology provides compelling tamper resistance and increased protection. The best feature is Intel AT can now transmit latitude and longitude (using GPS coordinates) to the central server if the system is equipped with a supported 3G module. So you know where exactly your laptop is.  But Intel AT is a subscribed service. Intel AT is activated through service subscriptions from Intel AT-enabled software and service
providers.

Source and for more details: http://www.intel.com/technology/anti-theft/