Theft management system and method

• US 8,429,759 B2
• Filed: 03/31/2009
• Issued: 04/23/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 03/31/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Original Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Inventors: Adrangi, Farid
• Primary Examiner(s): Flynn, Nathan
• Assistant Examiner(s): Su, Sarah
• Application Number:
  US12/415,952
• Publication Number:
  US 20100251391A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,484 Days
• Field of Search: 726/34, 726/35, 340/500, 340/568.1
• 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 disabled in response to receipt of the theft message,

wherein the theft message is detected based on filtering of an incoming Short Message Service (SMS) message, wherein an application header of the SMS message is examined for a vendor identifier in response to receipt of the incoming SMS message and the incoming SMS message is determined to be the theft message if the vendor identifier matches a pre-configured vendor identifier, wherein receiving the notification or transmitting the theft message is performed at a theft management server, a service organization, or combinations thereof from or to the computing device via a 3G network, wherein the computing device comprises a manageability engine to transmit a message indicative of the disabled state of the computing device to the theft management server, and wherein the theft management server and the computing device send and receive messages without dependency on a user or host operating system of the computing device.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein transmitting the theft message to the computing device is performed through a 3G Short Message Service (SMS) gateway.

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

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

5. The method of claim 3, further comprising causing transmission of the theft message to a chipset of the computing device through a side band bus.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein transmitting the theft message causes locking of the computing device in response to receipt of the theft message by a chipset of the computing device.

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

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising, in response to recovery of the computing device from the location, transmitting a remote unlock message to the computing device.

9. 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.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein transmitting the theft message causes processing of the theft message with hardware security versus in software or basic input/output system (BIOS) of the computing device.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein a determination that the theft message is from an authentic sender is performed based on a comparison of information in a header of the theft message and an address of an originator of the theft message.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising silently discarding the theft message in response to a determination that the theft message is from an unauthentic sender.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the application header indicates whether the incoming SMS message carries an OOB message.

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 transmits a theft alert message to a wireless module of the computing device via a message service gateway, wherein the theft message is detected based on filtering of an incoming Short Message Service (SMS) message, wherein an application header of the SMS message is examined for a vendor identifier in response to receipt of the incoming SMS message and the incoming SMS message is determined as the theft message if the vendor identifier matches a pre-configured vendor identifier, wherein the OOB notification is received or the theft message is transmitted at a theft management server, a service organization, or combinations thereof from or to the computing device via a 3G network, wherein the computing device comprises a manageability engine to transmit a message indicative of the disabled state of the computing device to the theft management server, and wherein the theft management server and the computing device send and receive messages without dependency on a user or host operating system of the computing system.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the message service gateway is a 3G SMS gateway and the theft management server transmits 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 comprises the 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 disables at least one component of the computing device in response to a lock message received from the wireless module.

18. The system of claim 16, wherein the manageability engine 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.

19. 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 received from a remote server and wherein the remote server generates the lock message in response to an OOB message indicative of theft of the computing device, wherein the lock message is detected based on filtering of an incoming Short Message Service (SMS) message, wherein an application header of the SMS message is examined for a vendor identifier in response to receipt of the incoming SMS message and the incoming SMS message is determined as the lock message if the vendor identifier matches a pre-configured vendor identifier, wherein the OOB message is received or the lock message is transmitted at a theft management server, a service organization, or combinations thereof from or to the computing device via a 3G network, wherein the computing device comprises a manageability engine to transmit a message indicative of the disabled state of the computing device to the theft management server, and wherein the theft management server and the computing device send and receive messages without dependency on a user or host operating system of the computing device.

20. The apparatus of claim 19, wherein a payload of the lock message comprises the application header.

21. The apparatus of claim 19, wherein the application header comprises the vendor identifier, information to indicate existence of an OOB message in the lock message, and an operator address.

22. The apparatus of claim 19, wherein the wireless network interface checks a portion of the message to determine whether the message is not a mobile initiated SMS.

23. The apparatus of claim 19, wherein the wireless network interface checks a portion of the message to determine whether the message is from a different originator than an originator of the message.

24. The apparatus of claim 19, wherein the wireless network interface communicates in accordance with one or more of:

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

25. A non-transitory 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 disabled in response to receipt of the theft message, wherein the theft message is detected based on filtering of an incoming Short Message Service (SMS) message, wherein an application header of the SMS message is examined for a vendor identifier in response to receipt of the incoming SMS message and the incoming SMS message is determined to be the theft message if the vendor identifier matches a pre-configured vendor identifier, wherein receiving the notification or transmitting the theft message is performed at a theft management server, a service organization, or combinations thereof from or to the computing device via a 3G network, wherein the computing device comprises a manageability engine to transmit a message indicative of the disabled state of the computing device to the theft management server, and wherein the theft management server and the computing device send and receive messages without dependency on a user or host operating system of the computing device.

26. The computer-readable medium of claim 25, 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.