Lenovo Kills Notebooks with an SMS

By Greg McNevin

November 27 2008: Lenovo is adding an new layer of security to select laptops, with the company announcing that should you lose or have you laptop stolen you can now have it disabled remotely by sending it a text message.

The technology works by enabling owners of certain models to send a text message to their notebook via a 3G phone network. When received, the next time the machine is turned on or off it will have its hardware disabled – similar to a kill switch on a car.

If the laptop is recovered (or for whatever reason accidentally disabled) it can be returned to working condition by inputting a passcode established when the machine was originally set up.

Lenovo does not say exactly what is disabled to “kill” the laptop, obviously for security reasons, however, according to some commentators the hard drive appears to stay active, making hardware-level encryption a desired extra.

The new feature is expected to be available in some Lenovo notebooks from 2009.

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