homegrown spyware

neo100101

A general question to anyone that can help. I need a way to monitor the usage of 50+ laptops over the internet including all software/hardware located on said laptops. I have looked over several asset tracking systems online and none of them will accomplish this without using a TSR that can be disabled at the users whim.

Is there some way I can script it so that when the users log into our secured members area that I can inventory their laptops. I know cPanel has a feature that reads the browser and OS version but I want something a little more in depth.

Is it possible to do this feat of magic?

jayant

not something PHP can accomplish.

you may write an activeX control / applet or something to achieve the much more info. but still not everything.
for complete picture you will need a TSR.

moving to echo lounge.

Norman_Graham

Hi Neo100101

Just for your information - in case you are affected by this - EU regulations require that all users are informed in advance of all surveillance procedures. If they aren't, any disciplinary action taken as a result of banned behaviour is illegal. You can ban anything you want, but you have to tell them first and you have to inform them of which technologies have been put in place to monitor their actions.

HTH

Norm

neo100101

(A) I'm not in Europe
(😎 common courtesy

These are company owned laptops that need only have company owned and administered software on the desktop. Their really isn't a privacy issue for our sales rep's since we own the hardware and they sign agreements to allow "on-the-spot" audits of hardware/software. This is a way to monitor our hardware and do dynamic audits in a helpdesk situation.

We notify all users of audits since they are user initiated and still would be using a web based system.

piersk

You could write something in VB (I'm assuming you're using windows here) like a keyboard logger that detected when the laptop was connected to the internet and then emailed/ftp/somehow copied the results to a central db.

Just a thought...

jayant

Originally posted by piersk
You could write something in VB (I'm assuming you're using windows here) like a keyboard logger that detected when the laptop was connected to the internet and then emailed/ftp/somehow copied the results to a central db.

Just a thought...

fro that it will have to be memory resident => TSR 🙂

bad76

Hi,
for windows NT and 2K there is a way: you can get all the needed info from registry keys. But to do this remotely (from NETBIOS...) you have to know the administrator's password.

If you know it, you can do a little dictionary, and because all laptops are owned by the same company, maybe the passwords are only 4/5 different kind.
Then a brute force from this little dictionary take 1 or 2 minutes per machines...

I repeat: you havo to know the administrator's password.

But, you can't do it with php, you need another kind of languages, like c/vb.

see you

Norman_Graham

Originally posted by neo100101
We notify all users of audits since they are user initiated and still would be using a web based system.

Well, sure. I just wanted to let you know to save you grief later. We recently had a lot of shouting and screaming in my company over this very issue.

Hope you find what you're looking for.

Norm