Ultrabooks have Intel Anti-Theft tech, yawn

Don't bother bricking the device, the data's encrypted

Consumer laptops built to Intel's new Ultrabook standard-cum-brand must include Intel Anti-Theft technology. Well, so what?

On the surface Intel AT sounds good. If a laptop is lost or stolen, the data partition on the hard drive can be disabled at the hardware level — essentially bricking it — by sending the laptop what Intel calls a "poison pill".

Or the laptop can be configured so the drive self-bricks if it fails to successfully poll the Intel AT server, indicating that it's been removed from its usual networks.

If the thieves try to install the hard drive into another computer, well, the data is encrypted with keys that are tied to the original laptop. They lose.

This technology was already available to enterprise customers as part of the Intel vPro specification. Now the Ultrabook spec brings it to consumer devices. And consumers are worried about losing their data, right?

OK, sure. But the existence of that encrypted hard drive means the thieves can't access the data on the stolen laptop anyway. Well, not unless they obtain the password.

Their real worry will be whether they had a backup — because the data is where the value lies these days, not in the hardware. That's where Intel AT misses the point.

Hardware does cost money, sure, though commoditisation mean it's becoming cheaper every day. But an anti-theft system needs to stop the hardware being stolen in the first place.

"[Intel AT] only works as a disincentive to theft if all laptops are like that and thieves just stop stealing full stop, or if there's a massive sticker on the front saying 'This is anti-theft enabled. Don't steal it. You won't get anything out of it.' And then they'll just steal it and smash it," said James Turner, information security advisor with IRBS.

"Providing their data is not being compromised by criminals, and they've got a backup of it, at that point they stop caring," he told CSO Online. "This is what insurance is for."

My own experience supporting consumer and SME end users tells me that Intel AT probably won't even get used. Or if it is, the password will be forgotten. Or set to the same password as every device and every account the user owns.

I'm wondering whether consumers will end up being scammed by fake Intel AT portals. The Intel AT servers could themselves become a target. Could hackers break in and send poison pills to thousands of devices at once?

"I think that's a good question, and we have security people who do this for a living, so we are pretty confident," said Rick Kapur, Intel AT's director of marketing, at Friday's Ultrabook launch in Sydney.

But Sony had "security people who do this for a living" too, and look what happened to them.

• Tweet