THEFT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM AND METHOD

• US 20100251391A1
• Filed: 03/31/2009
• Published: 09/30/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 03/31/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Original Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Inventors: Adrangi, Farid
• Granted Patent: US 8,429,759 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 726/34
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/126 Anti-theft arrangements, e.g. protection against subscriber identity module [SIM] cloning

Abstract

Methods and apparatus for theft management are described. In an embodiment an out-of-band notification is received, indicative of theft of a computing device. In response, a theft message is delivered to the computing device using a wireless wide area network. Other embodiments are also disclosed and claimed.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving an out-of-band (OOB) notification indicative of theft of a computing device;

transmitting a theft message representative of the theft to the computing device via a wireless wide area network, wherein at least one component of the computing device is to be disabled in response to receipt of the theft message.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving the notification is to be performed at a theft management server of a corporate network, or a service organization, or combinations thereof.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein transmitting the theft message comprises transmitting the theft message from the theft management server to the computing device via a 3G network.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein transmitting the theft message to the computing device is to be performed through a 3G Short Message Service (SMS) gateway.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one component of the computing device is to be disabled in response to transmission of a remote lock message to a network interface card of the computing device.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the remote lock message is to be transmitted to the computing device through a 3G SMS gateway.

7. The method of claim 5, further comprising causing transmission of the theft message to a chipset of the computing device through a side band bus.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the out-of-band SMS message is to be detected based on filtering of incoming SMS messages.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein transmitting the theft message is to cause locking of the computing device in response to receipt of the theft message by the chipset of the computing device.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving a location of the computing device via the wireless wide area network.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising, in response to recovery of the computing device from the location, transmitting a remote unlock message to the computing device.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising transmitting an unlock message to a chipset of the computing device to cause unlocking of the computing device.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein transmitting the theft alert is to cause processing of the theft alert with hardware security versus in software or basic input/output system (BIOS) of the computing device.

14. A system comprising:

a theft management server to detect a theft of a computing device in response to an OOB notification, wherein the theft management server is to transmit a theft alert message to a wireless module of the computing device via a message service gateway.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the message service gateway is a 3G SMS gateway and the theft management server is to transmit the theft alert message to the wireless module via the 3G SMS gateway using an Internet Protocol connection.

16. The system of claim 14, wherein the computing device is to comprise a manageability engine to receive the theft message from the wireless module and to manage the computing device in response to receipt of the theft alert message.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the manageability engine is to disable at least one component of the computing device in response to a lock message received from the wireless module.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the manageability engine is to transmit a message indicative of the disabled state of the computing device to the theft management server.

19. The system of claim 16, wherein the manageability engine is to transmits a location of the computing device to the theft management server via a wireless wide area network when the system is in stolen mode.

20. The system of claim 14, wherein the theft management server and the computing device are to send and receive messages without dependency on a user or host operating system of the computing system.

21. An apparatus comprising:

a management unit to receive a lock message from a wireless network interface over a sideband bus and to cause one or more components of a computing device to become disabled,

wherein the lock message is to be received from a remote server and wherein the remote server is to generate the lock message in response to an OOB message indicative of theft of the computing device.

22. The apparatus of claim 21, wherein a payload of the lock message is to comprise an application header.

23. The apparatus of claim 22, wherein the application header is to comprise a vendor identifier and an operator address.

24. The apparatus of claim 21, wherein the wireless network interface is to check a portion of the message to determine whether the message is not a mobile initiated SMS.

25. The apparatus of claim 21, wherein the wireless network interface is to check a portion of the message to determine whether the message is from a different originator than an originator of the message.

26. The apparatus of claim 21, wherein the wireless network interface is to communicate in accordance with one or more of:

3G, WiMAX, Bluetooth, radio frequency, WiFi, or Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11n.

27. A computer-readable medium comprising one or more instructions that when executed on a processor configure the processor to perform one or more operations to:

receive an out-of-band (OOB) notification indicative of theft of a computing device;

transmit a theft message representative of the theft to the computing device via a wireless wide area network, wherein at least one component of the computing device is to be disabled in response to receipt of the theft message.

28. The computer-readable medium of claim 27, further comprising one or more instructions that when executed on a processor configure the processor to receive the OOB notification at a theft management server of a corporate network, or a service organization, or combinations thereof.

29. The computer-readable medium of claim 28, further comprising one or more instructions that when executed on a processor configure the processor to transmit the theft message from the theft management server to the computing device via a 3G network.

30. The computer-readable medium of claim 29, further comprising one or more instructions that when executed on a processor configure the processor to transmit the theft message to the computing device through a 3G SMS gateway.