Adeona: An open source laptop tracking system

posted Jul 26th 2008 6:10pm by Kimberly Lau
filed under: laptops hacks, security hacks

Adeona is an open source internet-based laptop tracking system that is free to use. It’s available for Linux, OSX, and Windows XP/Vista. After installation, Adeona will submit at random intervals, anonymously encrypted updates on the computer’s location to servers on the Internet, specifically to OpenDHT, a free storage service. The information is kept on the servers for one week. If your laptop becomes lost or stolen, you can use the retrieval tool to access information about where your laptop was last used: the external IP address, internal IP address, and nearby routers. If your laptop is a Mac, you can also download isightcapture to grab a picture of the thief. Adeona is designed to protect against common criminals who may not have much technological knowledge, and does not have any protections against events such as disk wipes. The open source nature of Adeona’s system means that there’s ample opportunity to improve upon the release or add extensions. Here’s one user who really likes what he sees.

[via Schneier]

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Comments [8]

tagged: adeona, laptops, open source, OpenSource, schneier, security, theft, tracking

Reader Comments

My laptop is a Dell, but it’s got a built-in webcam (as do many, MANY windows lappies). Is there a free open source app for that?

Also, not a hack.

Posted at 8:22 pm on Jul 26th, 2008 by klintor

I just got this and I have to say I’m very excited. I am always so overprotective of my Laptop cause it took months to tweek it and Dammit Im not starting over. My only question is, when I play WOW do you think the silent updates might effect my performance?

Posted at 8:59 pm on Jul 26th, 2008 by ChickenCow

isightcapture doesn’t turn the green isight light off so whomever will realize you’re watching f.y’all’s.i.

Posted at 3:37 am on Jul 27th, 2008 by James

nice list, thanks for sharing.

Posted at 4:57 am on Jul 27th, 2008 by sumati

Crap, now I gotta start wearing a ski mask!

Posted at 12:42 pm on Oct 8th, 2008 by The Bro

The Adeona software has not worked for the past month due to issues with Open DHT servers. If you installed this on your system thinking it wil protect you, it is important to note that IT IS NOT. If you check the Adeona lists you will see that it has not been functioning for the past month, with no fix in site.

Posted at 8:19 am on Dec 23rd, 2008 by Eric

It’d be lovely to see more ’security’ apps made for notebook users right up to really obnoxious and off the wall ideas. Maybe use the bluetooth adapters built in to attempt to connect to any non-protected devices in the vicinity and try to get a message out, crank the volume and sound an alarm, maybe have a small dualbooted partition with a custom built OS made just for the event of the thing getting stolen and if it’s booted into the main OS and knows it’s stolen, modify the bootloader to lock into that second OS and reboot automatically.

Just some possibilities, obnoxious or not. ;)

Posted at 11:25 pm on Jan 20th, 2009 by cr08

It would be best if you could configure it to send it’s location via email.

make a spare gmail account just for laptop tracking… dont have to worry about the dht thing…
or is that what it does?

Posted at 1:56 pm on May 6th, 2009 by robocop

Adeona: An open source laptop tracking system

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