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Man Uses Remote Logon To Help Find Laptop ThiefComments:251
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Oct 01, 2008 11:48 PM
from the cyber-bloodhound dept.
from the cyber-bloodhound dept.
After his computer was stolen, Jose Caceres used a remote access program to log on every day and watch it being used. The laptop was stolen on Sept. 4, when he left it on top of his car while carrying other things into his home. "It was kind of frustrating because he was mostly using it to watch porn," Caceres said. "I couldn't get any information about him." Last week the thief messed up and registered on a web site with his name and address. Jose alerted the police, who arrested a suspect a few hours later. The moral of the story: never go to a porn site where you have to register.
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Makes sense (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Funny)
What else would someone use a laptop for, period?
Laptops get in the way...
Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Funny)
Laptops get in the way...
Yes but the thermal stimulation is well worth it on a cold winter's eve as you watch your favorite bukkake vid by the light of an open fire.
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Funny)
oblig fail (Score:5, Funny)
http://failblog.org/2008/10/01/christmas-candle-fail/ [failblog.org]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Tablet computers are better. They leave a hand free...
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
If not reformat completely.
Not all reformats help (Score:5, Interesting)
Q. Can ComputracePlus be detected?
A. .. snip .. The Agent can survive a hard drive re-format, F-disk command and hard drive re-partitioning.
http://www.absolute.com/computraceplus/faqs.asp [absolute.com]
Re:Not all reformats help (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see it survive a Linux LiveCD.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Computrace Agent Hardware & Operating System Requirements:
Microsoft Windows 95, 98, ME, NT and the 32-bit versions of Windows 2000, XP, Windows Server 2003 and all 32 and 64 bit editions of Windows Vista
Mac OS X version 10.2
Looks like you're right. As to how it works, here's my guess:
Re:Not all reformats help (Score:5, Informative)
Probably not actually. From TFA:
Q. What happens if a computer's hard drive is removed?
A. The Computrace Agent resides on a computer's hard drive so if the drive is removed and installed on another computer, the Agent will initiate contact with the Monitoring Center at its next scheduled call. It will then report its new location. The original computer will no longer be protected.
If your scenario was correct then it would reinstall the trace software on the new hard disc.
Re:Not all reformats help (Score:5, Informative)
We have CompuTrace on many of our laptops here at work. Only certain manufacturers have the agent pre-loaded but it is embedded in the BIOS. If you flash the BIOS and put different firmware on it you can wipe it out. CompuTrace won't work if you formatted the machine and put Linux on it since they don't (currently) have a Linux version of their agent.
CompuTrace is really not a great service though because some of their promise is that they'll recover your laptop in X days or pay you $1000, guaranteed! What they don't tell you is that to keep this "warranty" active you have to make sure that your laptops check in at least once every few weeks or else they call you and demand that you check-in the laptop within a week or lose your warranty.
This is a real pain when you have laptops that are being taken home by your users and they don't have internet at home or just leave it sitting in a desk drawer for weeks at a time. Trying to track down all of the machines to make sure they are hooked up to the internet to check-in at least once every few weeks is a total mess.
Re:Not all reformats help (Score:4, Funny)
Let's see the thief get online when the LiveCD cannot recognize the laptop's WiFi.
(*Ducks*)
Re:Not all reformats help (Score:5, Funny)
Linux: the laptop thief's choice.
You can definitely remove it by... (Score:3)
Removing all sectors and the wiping the MBR. If it can survive a reformat, it hides in the boot sector like those viruses from way back when. No partitions, no MBR, no place for it to hide.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I always found this hard to believe, someone wanna explain how that would work without custom hardware.Do they assume the bootloader will be left behind?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not all reformats help (Score:5, Funny)
.... when I was looking at a hex dump of my BIOS for fun
Do tell us more about your hobbies and pastimes!
Re:Not all reformats help (Score:4, Informative)
Looks like this is the answer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_Protected_Area [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I don't know precisely how it works, but the bootloader is the only possible way it could survive a repartition. The code is definitely stored on the hard drive, as the FAQ mentions.
Re:Not all reformats help (Score:4, Interesting)
There is custom hardware. It's built into the BIOS on most modern Dell laptops.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The moral of the story (Score:5, Informative)
Never leave your laptop on top of your car when carrying other things home!
What, did you think this thing was portable?
Pft (Score:5, Funny)
Talk about getting caught with your dick in your hand...
What remote access technology? (Score:5, Interesting)
I use remote access, but I have to type in the IP address to connect. How could he knew the I address?
I read this story several times but nowhere the software name is mentioned.
Re:What remote access technology? (Score:4, Informative)
He was probably running a dynamic DNS client.
Re:What remote access technology? (Score:5, Informative)
Prob running something like dyndns or something that would automatically notify the server of the ip address when online, so he simply had to use his registered dyndns name.
Re:What remote access technology? (Score:5, Informative)
How could be this done? How could he connect to his laptop without knowing the IP address?
One word, DynDNS.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Several remote access apps have an option to notify via email when your IP address changes.
Plans within plans? (Score:2, Interesting)
Hey, that guy in the ski mask! (Score:5, Funny)
TISM! (Score:5, Funny)
For those in Australia : looks like his laptop was stolen by TISM. Especially considering the lyrics to this TISM song :
http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/t/tism10923/beencaughtwankin434144.html [stlyrics.com]
So frustrated.. (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, it must have been sooooo frustrating to have to sit there and watch that porn. Poor bastard!
article icon (Score:3, Interesting)
They did a poor job of airbrushing the apple off the back of that macbook.
Why not just use the WAN IP? (Score:2, Insightful)
1) get WAN IP of computer being used at thief's house(e.g. 66.245.54.53)
2) do reverse DNS IP lookup, see that it belongs to Earthlink or whatever ISP
3a) if it's a fixed IP then we're done, have the Police ask the ISP to whom they assigned the IP (or get a warrant if we're good monkeys)
3b) if it's a dynamic IP then the ISP has to check their logs to see to whom they gave the IP at the time, but they should have that
4) Police show up at the door as above.
Why do you ne
Re: (Score:2)
Because both 3a and 3b require the cops to bestir themselves a lot more than giving them a picture of the guy so their computer can just do a matching on the database of prior-record thefts. You have to make it as easy as possible for them to track down the bad guys unless you have an angry investigative reporter or DA on your side. Which stolen laptop cases usually do not.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
3a and 3b aren't all that difficult. My Macbook Pro was stolen back in April and once I had the IP address, all it took was a 15 minute conversation with the investigating officer, who then got a subpoena to get the address from Comcast. How is driving around to triangulate the signal and narrow it down to a few locations easier than that?
I'm pretty sure if I had gone to the cops with "Here's the house I traced my laptop's radio transmissions to!" instead of "Here's the IP address that he is using, please
Re:This is not the first... (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder why he didn't just tap into the webcam on his computer while the perpetrator was... oh wait.
Re:This is not the first... (Score:5, Funny)
In other words:
1. get your laptop stolen by hot chick (or somebody else, according to your tastes).
2. remote logon.
3. wait for them to look at porn and activate camera
4. ???
5. profit!
Re:I'm surprised that the thief was so dumb. (Score:4, Insightful)
I've seen a thief who was so stupid, that he stole a kid's bike from (directly!) across the back alley, and then left the stolen bike by the back door.
He was, apparently, both surprised and indignant when the father of the child whose bike was stolen came over for a visit.... wielding a baseball bat.
You think you've seen stupid? (Score:4, Interesting)
In nearby Oroville, CA, a thief robbed a bank at gunpoint, took off with several thousand dollars in cash, and then returned later in the day - to the same bank - to deposit the cash into his own bank account.
no, I'm not kidding.
(And this text box for idle just teh suxorz)
They want easy (Score:5, Insightful)
If they didn't mind hard they'd have got a job or started their own companies, or stolen something more challenging and rewarding
So what you do on your laptop is to create an account specially for thieves to use. Call it Honey if you like - with no password, or the password hint = instructions on how to get in.
Then your own account has a password, to keep the thief out, from deleting your encrypted stuff etc.
This way when the thief steals the laptop, they turn it on, click on "Your Account", get password prompt, click on Honey, get in straight - whoopee.
Immediately the stuff is launched to log data about the thief and his surroundings - webcam, microphone set to record, and then the data is uploaded.
Re: (Score:2)
log into VNC, don't touch the mouse
Who is more clever (Score:2)
I don't get it... if my laptop were stolen the thief wouldn't be able to login without my credentials. They'd have to reinstall the OS which would erase any remote connectivity function.
So in other words, you are admitting that if your laptop gets stolen you are never seeing it again, vs. this guy who got his back and got a thief arrested.
Yours is a better plan why again? If you go to that effort, why not focus instead on encrypting key files instead of locking down a system to which a thief has physical a
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So the moral of the story is to not have passwords or you won't get your computer back.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This really doesn't help you in the case that the thief has stolen your machine and has it physically in his own workshop with his own set of screwdrivers.
If you're paranoid about your secu
Re: (Score:2)
Most remote desktop programs have an observe-only mode (alternately, just don't move the mouse or type), and it's not likely that many thieves would realize what's stealing their bandwidth.
He probably didn't have a login password or set his system to auto log-in. It's pretty typical for home users.
Re:This hits close to home.. (Score:4, Funny)
Three days later, the entire town I live in was flooded with several feet of water from hurricane Ike.
I really wish I had the foresight to install this kind of software on my laptop. Might have helped...
I think protection from hurricanes is beyond its capabilities.