Make your PC difficult to steal, easy to recover

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Make your PC difficult to steal, easy to recover

By Scott Dunn For little or no money, you can lower the chances that your computer will be targeted by thieves. Take a few simple steps now to make your notebook and desktop PCs easier to recover should they ever be lost.

Secure your computers from real-world threats

A common saying in the computer world is that if an intruder has physical access to your computer, it’s not your computer anymore. I’ve written recently about ways to protect your system from malware embedded in Flash animations (Apr. 17) and harmful Web sites (May 1). But what about securing the computer itself?

The Seattle Times reported recently that Microsoft has given law-enforcement agencies a tool for decrypting passwords and analyzing computer activity and data. According to reports in Wired and elsewhere, Microsoft’s Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE) is a USB thumb drive that houses a collection of 150 off-the-shelf utilities. None of the programs were developed by Microsoft, and all of them are available to the public separately.

The programs, which include Windows Forensic Toolchest and RootkitRevealer, run from a script, so police officers don’t have to start each utility individually. By running the script from a USB drive, law-enforcement officials can collect information located in the PC’s RAM or available via a network connection. This data might be lost if the computer were unplugged and taken back to a lab.

If law-enforcement agencies and the public at large can get these tools, you have to wonder how the snoop apps might be used by co-workers who don’t have your best interests or privacy in mind.

Whether you’re concerned with others prying into your data or stealing your valuable hardware, protecting physical access to your computer is one of the wisest security moves you can make. Think of the things you take care not to lose, such as your house keys and your wallet. You keep these things safe by always knowing where they are or by storing them in secure locations. If you value your electronics, you should treat them the same way.

A number of vendors offer tools for securing your laptop, monitor, or CPU to a desk or other immovable object. Other PC security products put your system in a locked box or block access to drive ports and other controls. A variety of cables and other locks for laptops, desktops, and other equipment are available online. One popular site for such hardware is Secure-It.

However, there’s plenty you can do to lock down your PC without spending much — or anything at all.

Enhance recoverability by leaving your mark

If your system (or your cell phone, PDA, or other portable electronic device) is found by an honest person, your chances of reclaiming it are better if it has been permanently labeled with your contact information.

The best labeling approach is to use an engraving tool to etch your contact information into the case of your PC or other equipment.

If you think putting your name and phone number on your devices gives up too much privacy, label the equipment with the e-mail address of an account whose name displays little or no identifying information. Most ISPs let you create multiple e-mail accounts, or you can sign up for a free account at Yahoo Mail, Gmail, or another Web service.

You’re more likely to get a response from the person who finds your lost laptop by attaching your phone number to the device. And you’ll increase your chances of recovering a lost or stolen PC even more by including an incentive such as “$300 reward” on your label.

Only a few of the many services designed to help recover missing products are free. For a limited time, Windows XP users who sign up early for the Laptop Superhero beta program at YouGetItBack.com can get in free. Download and install the software, and then register your information in the service’s “secure vault.” If someone reports finding your laptop, the company helps you get it back, just like the name says.

A related program that’s also free for the time being is LaptopLock. Install the software, set your preferences, and register with the service. The next time a computer you’ve reported as missing connects to the Internet, LaptopLock will detect it and perform whichever actions you’ve set up beforehand: delete or encrypt specified files, run a program or batch file of your choice, or display a message.

LaptopLock will also attempt to send identifying info about the notebook’s current IP address, although it’s questionable whether knowing the crook’s IP address would actually help police recover your computer.

The for-pay recovery option. Computer Security Products sells a hard-to-remove aluminum label that lists the company’s phone number and a serial number. A single label costs $25, and a package of 10 is priced at $150.

Should anyone contact the service about finding a system you’ve registered with the company, you’ll be notified and can make arrangements for retrieving the item. The label etches the contact information into the device’s case to protect you — even if someone removes the label itself.

Less-expensive (and less secure) labels for keys, luggage, and electronics are available for $10 to $15 from YouGetItBack.com.

In addition to LaptopLock’s free (for now) service, a number of for-pay services help you track stolen computers over the Internet. One of the leading PC-recovery services is ComputraceComplete from Absolute Software. The service costs $50 per year. If it doesn’t recover your laptop within 60 days of its loss, you may be eligible for the company’s $1,000 Theft Recovery Guarantee.

Sound the alarm to prevent tampering

As I mentioned above, the best way to prevent your PC and other hardware from being stolen or accessed is to lock it away. Your lockdown strategy depends on your location:

• Hotel: Don’t assume that items are safe just because they are locked in your hotel room. Get a room with a safe for storing laptops and other valuables, or take such items with you when you leave the room.

• Office: Notebook computers, removable hard drives, laptop memory cards, USB thumb drives, PDAs, and any other equipment in your office that is easily removed should be put in a locked cabinet overnight and on weekends. If your company doesn’t provide such a cabinet, suggest that it get one.

• Traveling: Airports and other travel scenes present so many possible distractions that it takes only a moment for someone to snatch an unattended item or for you to leave something behind. Never leave a laptop visible in your car; if you must, stow it in the car’s trunk, but try to avoid being seen locking such items there. If you need to put your computer down for a moment while you’re in any public setting, keep the case between your feet.

The free Laptop Alarm alerts you when your computer is touched by someone. After you install the program and activate the lock function, you can set the laptop alarm to play a loud warning sound when the machine loses AC power, when its mouse moves or is unplugged, or when the system shuts down or logs off.

Figure 1. Laptop Alarm will sound an alert when the options you select occur.

Even if the notebook’s sound is muted or turned down, Laptop Alarm turns the sound back on and plays the alarm at full blast. You can set a password to unlock your system or turn off the alarm.

Naturally, this software won’t guard your computer in a coffee shop while you use the restroom. But if you need to pay attention to other things for a while, the program can help alert you if someone is tampering with your system.

Laptop Alarm is currently listed as a beta product, so some of its advertised features may not yet work. Still, the alarm worked quite well when I tested the program.

Scott Dunn is associate editor of the Windows Secrets Newsletter. He has been a contributing editor of PC World since 1992 and currently writes for the Here’s How section of that magazine.

Fred's departure triggers a torrent of 'thanks'

By Dennis O’Reilly A stream of tributes pours in from readers following news of Fred Langa’s retirement from tech writing. While we know we’ll never be able to replace Fred’s honest, reliable, and downright useful advice, we pledge to do our best to live up to the standard he set.

Fred Langa is the premier tech journalist of the last 30 years, which is just about as long as there has been tech journalism. We knew when he announced his retirement that it would cause a “great disturbance in the force,” as George Lucas might put it. What we weren’t prepared for was the flood of tributes from readers, many of whom — like Jim Konzak — have been reading Fred’s articles for decades:

• “It was with great regret that I read of your decision to end your columns and move on. I can’t say when I first began to read your work; it must have been in the (still sorely missed) Windows Magazine during the era of Windows 3.0 or 3.1. More recently, LangaList was always a must-read for me, and I was very happy when you and Brian Livingston joined forces in Windows Secrets. Please forgive the colloquialism, but oh man, you will be missed. Big time. Come back for a visit now and then and let us know how you’re doing. Most of all, thanks for all you’ve done. The computing world is truly better for your efforts.”

A recurring theme in nearly every tribute was a big thanks for all the tech help, sorrow for seeing it end, and heartfelt wishes for a fulfilling retirement, as expressed by Peter Ballantyne:

• “Fred, you have been my constant helper over ten years of computing, from Windows 98 through to Vista. Your column was the one info and help source I trusted above all else. All other tech writers should seek to emulate you. For your integrity, your accuracy, and your help with more problems than you will ever know, I thank you. May your years ahead be filled with satisfaction and grace.”

No, there is no replacing someone like Fred. He didn’t just make complicated subjects understandable; Fred helped us put technology into the perspective of our everyday lives. And that’s the challenge we at Windows Secrets promise to meet every week: to make sense of the technobabble as we help you apply technology to enhance all aspects of your life. James Van Buren reminded us of this in his tribute to Fred:

• “Thanks for everything, Fred. You helped me so much. I really missed LangaList when that ended, but I guess it helped to wean me off your advice when you went to Windows Secrets. I hope everyone there can try to emulate the way you approached helping people. I really did appreciate your style. Take care and have a happy retirement.”

We join with readers in offering Fred all good wishes as he rides off into a brighter sunrise. If we do our job half as well as Fred did his, we’ll be way ahead of the game.

The Known Issues column brings you readers’ comments on our recent articles. Dennis O’Reilly is technical editor of WindowsSecrets.com.

A Japanese take on full-body massages

Who doesn’t love a massage chair? These vibrating wonders provide relaxation and stress relief while you watch your favorite TV show. And models with multiple settings give you a variety of rubdown styles: Swedish, deep tissue — and Japanese? This two-minute clip from a Japanese variety program shows just how relaxing a chair massage can be. Unless, of course, the chair is straight out of Stephen King’s attic. Play the video

Rearrange your keyboard the free and easy way

By Woody Leonhard When was the last time you accidentally hit your Caps Lock key AND SUDDENLY STARTED SHOUTING? Completely disabling the Caps Lock key — indeed, disabling or remapping almost any key on your keyboard — is easy when you use the free SharpKeys Registry editor.

Save time and trouble with a custom key layout

Ergonomics took a hard turn in a depressing direction in the summer of 1986. That’s when IBM released its 101-key “Enhanced Keyboard.” While the new keyboard featured some improvements over the earlier 84-key AT keyboard, IBM made a couple of really bad design decisions.

Foremost among them: the rarely-used Caps Lock key, previously stuck out of the way down in the lower-right corner of the keyboard, got repositioned to the high-traffic area above the left Shift key. At the same time, IBM banished the often-used Ctrl key to the lower-left corner. (Its doppelgänger is even further away in the lower-right corner of many keyboards.)

As a result, a generation of PC users grew up believing they’re at fault whenever a tiny slip of their left pinky suddenly activates the Caps Lock key. Amazing that such a trivial foible can bring your entire train of thought to a screeching halt as you punch, punch, punch the Backspace key to undo the caps.

Few PC hardware decisions have had such a devastating effect on productivity. Twenty years later, I wonder how many millions of person-hours have fallen victim to this simple, atrocious design mistake.

Moving the Ctrl key down into the lower-left corner — keyboard Siberia — turned everyday touch-typists into contortionists. Such keyboard shortcuts as Ctrl+A to select all, Ctrl+C to copy, and Ctrl+V to paste were easy to enter on the old keyboard. But with the Ctrl key banished to the bottom row, touch-typists have to rotate the entire left hand to press both shortcuts keys simultaneously.

The advent of the 101-key keyboard left many grizzled veterans wishing they could remap the keys on the keyboard to swap the Caps Lock key with Ctrl, say. Others want to disable the Insert key or make the Scroll Lock key perform some function that they actually use.

Before Windows NT arrived, mapping keys was tough. The venerable Northgate OmniKey keyboard, which ceased production many years ago, could be programmed to place the Ctrl, Alt, and Caps Lock keys where the 84-key gods intended them to be. Nearly all of today’s keyboards lack this capability, however.

Remap your keyboard via the Registry

Over the years, hardware and software vendors have come up with their own key-remapping approaches, all of which are convoluted, slow, and prone to errors. Microsoft addresses the remapping problem — to a first approximation, at least — in Windows NT, 2000, XP, and Vista by adding this Registry key (not to be confused with an actual physical key on your keyboard):

HKLM SYSTEM CurrentControlSet Control Keyboard Layout Scancode Map

If this Registry entry exists, Windows consults the contents of the Scancode Map every time you press a key on your keyboard and follows the value of that key as set in the Registry.

Editing the Registry is rarely easy, and the keyboard-mapping hack is more perilous than most such customizations. The Registry’s keyboard settings reek with geek, making what should be a straightforward task ridiculously Byzantine. Randy at RandyRants.com describes his descent into the nitty-gritty in a recent blog post.

Microsoft offers a free remapping tool called the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator, but I found the program to be incomplete and very difficult to use. Fortunately, there’s a much easier — and free — alternative.

Free download automates your key remapping

My favorite keyboard remapper is SharpKeys, from the aforementioned RandyRants.com. The program makes remapping keys a breeze on almost any keyboard.

For example, to kill your Caps Lock key, follow these steps:

• Step 1. If you run Windows XP and don’t already have the .NET Framework, download and install it. (Vista users needn’t bother because the .NET Framework is built into that OS.)
• Step 2. Download and install SharpKeys.exe. You may need to use an account with administrator privileges or supply an administrator password for the installer to run.
• Step 3. Before you run SharpKeys, create a System Restore point to protect against inadvertently remapping keys that are necessary for you to log on to your computer. Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Restore; choose “Create a restore point”; click Next; and then step through the rest of the wizard.

  If something goes wrong, reboot your PC, press the F8 key repeatedly, choose Last Known Good Configuration from the list of options that appears, reopen System Restore, and select the restore point you created previously.

• Step 4. Run SharpKeys by clicking Start, All Programs, RandyRants.com, SharpKeys. If you use Vista and aren’t logged on to an administrator account, right-click the SharpKeys shortcut on the Start menu and choose Run as Administrator.
• Step 5. Click the Add button. On the left, click the Type Key button. Press the Caps Lock key on your keyboard and click OK. On the right, make sure that you’ve selected the following option (which is the default, as shown in Figure 1) and click OK:

  — Turn Key Off (00_00)

• Step 6. Back in the SharpKeys main window, verify that SharpKeys is ready to map the Caps Lock key to Turn Key Off. Click Write to Registry. When the warning appears, click OK.
• Step 7. Back in the SharpKeys main window again, click Close.
• Step 8. Log off your computer and then log back on (or restart the system). Verify that your Caps Lock key doesn’t work anymore.

Figure 1. Customize your keyboard layout the easy way by using the free SharpKeys utility.

Note that remapping keys applies to the whole PC. Any key changes you make for one user will affect all user accounts on the machine.

With SharpKeys, almost every key on nearly any keyboard can be remapped to your liking — or turned off completely. There are some, uh, challenging details for the F-Lock keys that are commonly found on laptops; the SharpKeys FAQ describes these and other potential remapping glitches.

Now that your Caps Lock key is out of the way, you might consider turning off the Insert key, or making the Scroll Lock key open My Computer. With SharpKeys, your keyboard’s potential is limited only by your imagination.

Woody Leonhard‘s latest books — Windows Vista All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies and Windows Vista Timesaving Techniques For Dummies — explore what you need to know about Vista in a way that won’t put you to sleep. He and Ed Bott also wrote the encyclopedic Special Edition Using Office 2007.

Free tool roots out software vulnerabilities

By Ryan Russell Secunia’s Personal Software Inspector identifies the applications on your PC in need of an update or replacement. The new desktop version of the online scanner spots problems in thousands of programs, which is a big step up from the dozens of apps supported by its Secunia Software Inspector predecessor.

Easier-to-use scanner is also more comprehensive

In her Feb. 14 column, Susan Bradley recommended that you download and install Secunia’s Personal Software Inspector to ensure that the applications on your system have all the latest patches installed. I described the company’s online Software Inspector service in my July 27, 2007, column, which included a special Windows Secrets link for security scans.

With PSI, Secunia extends the company’s patch database to provide a more extensive software-vulnerability scan. The program is similar to Secunia’s commercial scanning tool, but PSI is free for personal use.

So what’s the big difference between SI and PSI? Secunia answers this question in the company’s FAQ. According to Secunia, SI scans for “a few dozen of the most common applications” while PSI “can identify thousands.”

Pinpoint and update the risky apps on your system

Secunia is correct, of course: the most striking difference between the two products is the volume of supported applications. While SI found a dozen or so programs on my computer, PSI identified a couple of hundred different apps.

But that’s not the only important difference between the two services. PSI performs a more complete scan of your hard drive, which takes longer to complete than SI’s online scanner. In fact, PSI’s analysis is comparable to a full virus or spyware scan, in terms of the time required to complete it.

PSI categorizes each program as Insecure, End-of-Life, or Patched. The tool finds the most recent version of programs on your PC as well as any old versions, installers, or other ancillary components. For example, PSI identified the Office 2000 Install CD, which I left on my drive to make patching easier, as several different nonsecure versions of Office applications.

The PSI scan also found copies of my old hard drives, all of which were brimming with out-of-date software. But that’s OK, because PSI lets you create “Ignore rules” to apply to programs you don’t want to be notified about.

The scanner gives you a convenient link to download updated versions of programs it identifies as vulnerable. You can also browse to the folders storing the problem programs or open Windows’ Add or Remove Programs Control Panel applet (which Vista refers to as Programs and Features).

One of the most interesting aspects of PSI is that the program wants to run all the time. In its always-on mode, PSI gives you live updates on your vulnerable-program status. For example, when I deleted a vulnerable program (one that wasn’t in use at all), PSI popped up a balloon indicating that a vulnerable program had been removed.

Build up a software-vulnerability scorecard

The PSI overview page shows you a pie graph indicating in green, yellow, and red pieces the current vulnerability status of your applications. The graph updates in real time as you patch old programs.

There’s also a graph that shows the history of your software updates. I haven’t had PSI installed long enough to build up an interesting historical graph, but it appears that the utility tracks your “Secunia System Score” over time. The higher the percentage, the more secure your system is.

I’m very pleased with the functionality of PSI, especially since the program is free. Being a QA guy, I can’t say it’s perfect, of course. I would like the Ignore rules to be more flexible. For example, I can exclude a directory but not a directory and its subdirectories.

I also wonder why PSI identifies Wireshark 0.99.8 as End-of-Life. While that version of the program is out of date, a new release is available. I’ve asked Secunia about this, and if I get an answer, I’ll provide an update in a future column.

But these are minor complaints. I have no hesitation in recommending that individuals use PSI as their primary software-patch tool. As always, if you try it out, please let me know what you think.

The Perimeter Scan column gives you the facts you need to test your systems to prevent weaknesses. Ryan Russell is quality assurance manager at BigFix Inc., a configuration management company. He moderated the vuln-dev mailing list for three years under the alias “Blue Boar.” He was the lead author of Hack-Proofing Your Network, 2nd Ed. and the technical editor of the Stealing the Network book series.