I just had a ‘wake in the night’ sort of idea (which is something I’m sure the Fins have a word for) so now I’m wondering if enough Lemmings could put their heads together to find some other, hopefully much better, solutions for loss prevention.
My idea, which I think is only good enough to get the conversation going, is to disassemble an Airtag, rig the Deck to support its power needs (I don’t know how this would be achieved), and then embed the finished product somewhere (I don’t know that, either) inside the case.
A hardware-side solution, like this, would allow the Deck to be tracked regardless of software changes.
If the solution is internal it couldn’t be detected, and it could function regardless of power state —— but at the expense of the Deck’s battery capacity. If the solution is external it could have independent power —— but would be detectable, snagable, and removable.
A software-side solution might be achievable, especially with Linux, and it would likely use much-less power —— but it would require the device to be not-off and not-factory-reset (which can be achieved with a few keystrokes in the settings menu).
I can’t talk to the hardware side, but from a software point of view it is unlikely to be possible to set up really any good tracking. The device doesn’t have a GPS, so you would have to rely on IP address location, which in turn would rely on the stealer setting up wifi on the deck without resetting it first.
It wouldn’t be hard to make the deck log the IP to an external server every time it connects to wifi, but it’s unlikely it would be very helpful. However, the deck could be set up to send more info, like nearby wifi networks, as well as a list of other devices on the wifi, which may help to locate it, but won’t be nearly as good as an airtag, or as if it had a GPS.
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I can’t talk to the hardware side, but from a software point of view it is unlikely to be possible to set up really any good tracking. The device doesn’t have a GPS, so you would have to rely on IP address location, which in turn would rely on the stealer setting up wifi on the deck without resetting it first.
It wouldn’t be hard to make the deck log the IP to an external server every time it connects to wifi, but it’s unlikely it would be very helpful. However, the deck could be set up to send more info, like nearby wifi networks, as well as a list of other devices on the wifi, which may help to locate it, but won’t be nearly as good as an airtag, or as if it had a GPS.
https://github.com/seemoo-lab/openhaystack