Gordon Dexter on 13 Jul 2010 19:02:02 -0700


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[PLUG] Laptop recovery--useful data to collect?


I'm setting up my Eee 901 netbook with a 'phone-home' type shell script that will collect various data in the event that it is stolen. I used to have Adeona but I found that DHT is no longer working, and that didn't get webcam shots anyways, so I thought I'd roll my own. The script will check for a certain subdomain that I will only create when the laptop is stolen, and then make a tarball with info that might help me find the thief and get my laptop back.

So far I'm getting
*webcam frame grabs using streamer
*screen captures with scrot
*wireless network scan (iwlist)
*IP address and routing info of course

It's all uploaded to an https webdav server in my living room. Does anybody have any further suggestions as to information to collect that might lead to the laptop's recovery in case of theft? Anything else the script should do that might be useful?

I know this probably won't do much in most cases, since professional thieves will just format it and resell it, and it might still be hard to recover the laptop even with all this info, but this is in part a theoretical exercise/just for fun. Ideas?

--Gordon
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