Password Recovery from stolen hard drive

[Rashkae]

p.echols at comcast.net wrote:

> 
> How would you script that?  9 times out of 10 I expect that the laptop would report a private address like 192.168.0.15  Useless information unless I had a way to log back into the laptop from where ever I was.  A pipe dream I think.
> 

Don't even need to script it really.  Create an account with dyndns.org, 
and a hostname for each of your theft vulnerable computers.  Then 
install the dndns client of your choice.   They should all be able to 
figure out the real ip address by querying dyndns for an IP, and 
automatically update the ip of the hostname wherever your notebook ends up.

This might be fun, but unfortunately, not very useful.  Police are 
unlikely to act on the information on the spot, which leaves 
vigilantism.  (A dangerous sport for the sake of a sub $1000 gadget)

Also, in the case of Ubuntu, the computer will never even get on the 
thanks to Network Manager.  There is no network connection until someone 
logs in, and the typical notebook thief is likely to wipe the drive 
rather than try to work around the login password.