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Protect Your Computer From Theft
mirko writes "This story is about Personal Computer Security, it describes an efficient way not to have your computer stolen, even if you let it in front of your home for some weeks (Well in this case, it finally was stolen but its owner quickly found it back). You'll need some concrete and a shovel to have your investment secured, though..." Allright, this is just funny as hell. Enjoy.
Why, quite obviously you've seen the Windows CEMENT page, and you neglected to mention it. ;)
This gives a whole new meaning to the term "rock solid stability".
::musical sting::
::studio audience laughs::
...tease people who would steal from you.
Sure hope some frustrated opportunist doesn't come back with a buddy and send this thing through your front window.
What about a modular system for sticking weights in? Maybe instead of a PCI card, you could bolt in a PCI-card-sized piece of concrete. It may not be as heavy in the end, but if you could fill empty space in the case with small individual weights, it might be worthwhile. Is there anything that's cheap, heavy, solid and non-conductive? Iridium weights might be good, but they only satisy two of the criteria. ;)
If you stand barefoot on a damp patch on a concrete floor and grab a live wire you will be convinced very quickly that yes, it does.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Concrete has a much higher resistance than copper wire, but it still conducts a lot better than the insulation on that wire. The National Electrical Code requires that a building's concrete foundation be made a part of the "grounding electrode system".
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Just don't do that standing while on a concrete floor holding a live wire, or you'll be electro-corrected. :-)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Somebody gave me an old PC-XT. I see this technique as a way to make it lighter.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
check out the rest of the good advice at pccarnage.net.
Hey, it's a honeypot for hardware! *grin*
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
And I was so hoping you wouldn't find out about me and your father. I hope you don't think any less of him. He's quite a 'big daddy' to me. *smile*
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
That would be a ton of computing power... sorry... he started it...
Jeff
You won't ever, EVER be adding ANY new components to that bad boy.
That line of criminals not stealing what they can't carry reminds of one of those "stupidest criminals" stories. Seems that some not-quite-bright fellow figured that there was a booming market in stolen car batteries in $SOME_TOWN. He climbed over a brick wall to get at the back door of an auto shop, and moved a a large number of car batteries, by hand, back over the wall. After doing this, he was so tired, he lay down to take a quick nap, which was how the police found him, curled up with his batteries.
In other words, only non-stupid criminals will not steal what they can't carry.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Perhaps the guts from a laptop fitted into a full tower or server case? You could probably bolt one into a server case, get all the interior walls of the case sheathed in concrete, drill some holes for air circulation and cabling, then load up the 75% of the case that's left with concrete. Use a port-replicator to use a regular keyboard/mouse/monitor with the beast, and you could be ready to rock.
Heck, this sort of thing could mean a lower insurance premium if you have a Powerbook or a Dell, since the concrete may well smother the flames before they really get going!
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Of course a few ounces of dog sh*t will do the same thing
It certainly put a stop to the janitor who was stealing people's lunches from the fridge at my old $ORK_PLACE. After eating that sandwich, he was observed filling his rolling trash bin via oral-gastric fluid reversal.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Maybe Taco can scrounge the net for source and compile his own?
Except that a grammar/spell checker is supposed to find misspelled words and improper phrasing, then suggest the correct spelling and/or phrasing, not the other way around. Can you imagine what a Taco-built spell/grammar checker would do to a sentence like this?
My dog has fleas.
The mind shrinks away from the possibilities.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
But for a regular PC, never.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
"My machine is a real boat anchor."
"Rock Solid Windows NT!!!"
"I've heard of firewalls, but that's ridiculous!"
"Dude, I c4n't haX0r th15 1337 b0xen - i've run ito a wall..."
.. and overheard in marketing: "OK, the Engineering Department has our new machine's specs set in concrete."
C'mon - everybody join in....
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
No guarantees it'll work, but i have mandrake running on mine (behind a firewall)
Tips and Tricks for Mozilla
I think this is pretty final proof that people bitching about grammar usually do it as an end unto itself rather than because it actually annoys them. However, I sure was confused about this guy renting out his machine in front of his house.
The Signal/Noise ratio can be improved in two ways. Remaining silent is the OTHER way.
Dude macs are seriously easy to upgrade. You don't even need a screwdriver to upgrade powermac g4 or cube. For the powermac just pull on the handle at the side, you can even open it up when the computer is running (not sure why you'd want to though). Turn off the cube, flip it over, push a button and handle pops out, pull out the 'core' and you can upgrade everything. Plus you feel like you're handling a nuclear reactor which is fun.
Not sure about the imac but it's still easy, and my iBook only took a screwdriver to upgrade. The PowerBook is a bit tough..
Now compare this to my PCs.. I have to unplug everything on my aptiva and pull the cover off the back, I have to rip off the faceplate on my athlon and then unscrew a side panel. On our dell you have to unscrew a thingy and then push HARD on two tabs and slide it forward. All very complicated stuff.
Plus on macs you don't have to screw around with IRQs, most of the hardware just works.
Enough ranting, I just don't like it when people get things that wrong.
This isn't too bad of an idea - disregarding the fact that computers are rarely stolen from homes, since they depreciate so quickly, by the time the thief got it to a hock shop, the damn thing is most likely obsolete...
Really, though - in theory, if one could get a "sheet" of lead - ie, about 14-15 inches on the side and 1.5-2 inches thick - well, bolt that to the side of your tower lid (on the inside of the left cover, if you are facing the front of the machine) - of course, your tower may lean and/or fall over to the left now...
:)
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
4) Get sued for entrapment and invasion of privacy by the thieves. Curse the stupidity of our legal system while you rot in jail with a Russian who demonstrated the flaws in some ebook software.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Or, taking and idea from those wily South Africans, install a flamethrower in your PC case!
NVidia graphics... Athlon CPU... IBM disk drives... BernzOMatic benzene...
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
After using Macs for years, I recently built a PC and searched long and hard for a relatively inexpensive case that was as easy to work with as my Powermac G4. If you're looking for color cases, check out colorcases.com. The case I ended up getting, though, was the AT900 case from pccase.com because it was nearly completely screwless. It is not ugly-looking but also not breathtaking like the G4's case. It has a great slideout motherboard tray and drives slide in pretty easily. They also have a black version but I didn't think that it would look good because of the white bezels on the drives. It was a really easy case to work with and it shipped quickly too.
Heard about a fellow who got so pained by people stealing his radios / CBs that he built a thermite charge into one, set to go off half a day or so after it was stolen.
One day it was stolen.
The next day the news had a story about a fire in an apartment building that apparently started in a closet that happened to be full of used consumer electronic equipment.
(The trouble with this approach, as you can see, is that many crooks live in multi-unit housing, so non-crook neighbors are likely to suffer serious economic hardship and maybe physical hardship or death, as "colateral damage" to the revenge on the crook.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Found from the net...
This was apparently done at a Boston railroad station just after WWII, it
could easily work at airports, hotels, anyplace where someone (skycap,
bellboy) carries your bags at some point.
Some MIT students put a large (10lb) electric gyroscope inside a
suitcase. Also inside was a car battery for power and a hidden switch on
the outside to activate the gyroscope.
The gyroscope was mounted with its axis normal to the flat side of the
suitcase. Thus, if you carried the suitcase normally by the handle while
walking straight ahead, nothing would happen. If you tried to turn,
gyroscopic precession would fight you.
The students got off a train and hailed a porter. As the shen suitcase was
handed to the porter the switch was thrown. The porter walked towards the
entrance to the station plaform (straight line) with no problem. As he
turned at the entrance to head for the taxi stand, the suitcase tried to
continue in the same direction as though it had a mind of its own. The
porter pulled the end around, and the suitcase tilted and levitated into
the air (pivoting on the handle). The porter dropped the suitcase and ran!
The suitcase bounced on its corners for a few moments before it quieted
down.
Try it on friends helping you pack for a trip!
--- if y cn rd ths y cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmmng!
I think the box would get torn apart on an early theft attempt, limiting the potential humor. Even better would be a box with several remote control options, such as electroshock antitheft (current running through case), a gyro to make the case bounce (thus scaring the wits out of whoever is carrying it) and maybe silly string from a front panel or something when someone bends down to look at it. A clever person with a couple extra dollars could have a lot of fun with this...
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
Just be careful that they don't steal the webcam. It would be somewhat easyer to carry...
Say no to software patents.
Actually, this boils down to a simple cost/benefit analysis. It all depends whether it is cheaper to buy new computers every month (because the old one got stolen...) or whether it is cheaper to pay the excessively inflated rents of the better part of town...
Say no to software patents.
Sure, you can legally do this, but don't expect to ever see your webcam again...
Say no to software patents.
Security through obscenity: Fill the hard drive with pr0n and tip off the authorities when it is stolen
Okay, the story, the idea, was funny. But, don't you think, that the text, itself, was strewn with just a few too many, umm, commas?
I put my case out on the street and wrote "wang" on the side of it with a black marker. I saw the garbage man come back with a lead vest and tongs to haul that baby away.
Cute. Would it be possible to fill the case with something heavy that still lets the computer work? (I imagine the biggest problem is finding a material that is nonconductive to electricity but doesn't cause the chips to overheat.)
Sanity is a sandbox. I prefer the swings.
I already have, but I've decided not to use it ;)
Actually, it's configurable to be able to do anything from 'First Post!' to 'Imagine a Beowulf...' to 'Jon Katz sucks!!'
Yes, I was very bored.
Mmmm... maybe you can get around the overheading problem with copper rebar?
Plus, it's brilliant for security; even if, say the FBI seizes it in a raid, can they remove the hard drive for analysis without destroying it?
That is the most retarded idea that I have ever heard in my life.
It's acutally worse than "Jump to Conclusions" in OfficeSpace.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
I was taking a swig of brew when I read the hornet line.
I'm now typing this on my emergency backup keyboard.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Macs are already hard enough to upgrade.
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
so on an MS system, you have just enough time to boot before you have to shut down. Maybe?
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
(Yes, the link has a nice graphic of this.)
I don't why, but it does seem strangely appropriate.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
You can buy the Silicon in a liquid/pasta form and then you can just paste it up and mixed with the right chemicals it wil get hard, fairly easy i guess...
Yeah, I think my local restraunt serves that silicon pasta. Blech! :P
FuzzyIf I may ask, what were the top five investments?
1. Your wife (not implying that you paid for her, that's simply a large investment in time and money)
2. Your house (excellent investment)
3. Your car
4. Your computers
5. ?
I hope number five wasn't Webvan stock.
...that "you're a criminal, you're stupid" touch. I'd like to see an extension of the original idea:
Take a nice Dell/Compaq/whoever box from a new PC. (For you computer guys/gals, I mean cardboard box, not the "computer" or "CPU" if I may use your lingo)
Get an old PC, do the concrete trick. Or, go one more and use lead or depleted uranium in lieu of concrete. Place computer in cardboard box and seal box (assuming you can lift the computer... a crane of some sort might be necessary).
Leave box on front porch with note from UPS. Video tape morons as they try to steal it. (You could even contact the police and participate in a massive sting operation). Post videos to website, and proceed to be slashdotted.
My neighborhood won't work for this, so I humbly beg an upstanding member of the community to push forth with these plans and then entertain us all with keen wit (and video evidence).
So what did I do? I took it to work, swapped it for the MD's computer... 640x480x8bit on a 19" monitor? Hehehe...
"Hey, it runs Word, that's all you use the *other* one for..."
Take 3-4 cans of expanding foam from the hardware store (the good stuff not the latex). Install them inside your case with a small charge (or just a pointy solieniod) to rupture them in case of multiple password failures. Stand back and wait. The expanding foam should not only destroy the PC, but it should congeal in a 3-4 cubic foot mass all around. That will learn them!
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
I don't know about your friend's insurance plan. But the insurance that I have does cover computers . And in the event that a computer is stolen it is replaced by a brand new machine regardless of how old the machine that was stolen.
So if I had a 386 get stolen it would be replaced by whatever computer I want :O) But up to a certain point of course. It will only cover up to like $4k or something. So a Sun enterprise 10k is out of the question.
When I discussed this with my insurance broker he said the reasoning was simply that it would be a big PITA to track down equipment that old.
"Ignorance is bliss" - Sypher in the Matrix
--
Garett
Apparently there's no Word Processor for Linux with a built in grammar checker. Maybe Taco can scrounge the net for source and compile his own?
A friend of mine acquired a siren/alarm thing that's used in either Finland or Sweden. This siren is used when families are very snowed in up in the hills in their cabins allowing them to be located. These sirens can be heard for five miles or so in the open. Let's just say he rigged a motion type device in his case so that when the case was tilted too far off balance the alarm would come on. Needless to say, this would cause any burgler to shit his pants and probably be deafened to the point of bleeding from his ears. It was a great proof of concept, but he liked to tinker with his box a lot and having accidently set it off a couple of times he removed it.
Well, actually diamonds are VERY thermally conductive and INCREDIBLY good dialectrics - not to mention that they are so dense that they are probably fairly heavy as well. However, it would be pretty expensive to have Debeers custom fit your PC with a diamond casing and diamond dust, and I think it would definately encourage theft if the material was known...
Seeing this computer in an episode of the Flintstones!
The result would be too heavy to lift but still functional. Drat-- how do I get this thing into the shop?
Sig: Tell all your friends NOT to download the Advanced Ebook Processor:
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Security though Adobe: Install Advanced eBook Processor from Elcomsoft, lable accordingly, and leave anywhere near an Adobe office...
Sig: Tell all your friends NOT to download the Advanced Ebook Processor:
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Outside the firewall, I imagine... Behind the firewally, you would put your real rackmount. Oh, and when I say "firewall" I don't mean one of those networking gadgets. I man a REAL firewall-- one put in by one of those construction firms...
Everyone should have their systems behind a firewall...
Sig: Tell all your friends NOT to download the Advanced Ebook Processor:
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Outside the firewall, I imagine... Behind the firewall, you would put your real rackmount. Oh, and when I say "firewall" I don't mean one of those networking gadgets. I mean a REAL firewall-- one put in by one of those construction firms...
Everyone should have their systems behind a firewall... Of course not any wall will do-- I remember University of South Carolina discovering how easy it was to break through a wall to discover the server on the other side (misplaced 4 years earlier).
Sig: Tell all your friends NOT to download the Advanced Ebook Processor:
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
What insurance company actually buys the stuff for you? There's a respected used computer pricing guide (I can't remember the name right now) that will list FMV prices for older computers. That's what your insurance company shold be paying.
Regardless, I've got about 10 386/486/Early Pentium machines that I'd love to see stolen^H^H^H^H^H^H have a good home....
Security through obscurity: Get hundreds of empty cases and leave them on your lawn, camoflaging your one PC that actually works.
Security through insects: Fill it with hornets.
Security through insecurty: Install outlook. Label accordingly, and leave anywhere near the VA linux offices.
"This week, teams, you have ten hours to build a computer casing that can resist our trusty steamroller!"
I'm sure the NERDS would be up for that one!
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
You know, if your neighborhood is so crime ridden that you actually make room in your house for decoy PCs, maybe you should consider moving somewhere else.
is a good fifty-dollar, two-hundred-pound car radio.
The navy encases any electronics that may contact seawater in resin. In a similar vein, I don't see why you couldn't cover the insides with plastic and then pour the concrete. The electronics don't care if they're encased in something, as long as that something is not conductive. Plastic should afford a decent barrier between the boards and the concrete, as long as you were careful to ensure that the electronics were completely sealed.
On second thought, there would be the obvious risk of overheating. But the thing would work for a few minutes at a time.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
Less funny than you think. Appropriately one of the first Beowulf clusters was called the Stone Soupercomputer. Not that they built it out of stone; it was named after the parable of the Stone Soup.
There's an article about it in this month's Scientific American.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
hidden background scripts that run at random times and "phone home", so you get the theif's IP address.
GPS type devices installed somewhere in the computer... connected to the United States' secret orbital bombing platform. You don't get your computer back, but you get revenge.
self-destruct mechanisms... if the computer password is typed incorrectly, the entire computer is designed to destroy its own key components.
Other suggestions?
if they could make concrete conduct :op Shiet.
Screw 3...
Of course a few ounces of dog sh*t will do the same thing, and is less straining on the back...
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Buy Hex-Rated Stuff, fight the DMCA!
But besides that, what I have done in my house to prevent some pre-puberty bastard from taking my pride and jow was this;
Picked up a few 486 and 386 computers from a swap meet, I believe I traded a couple 3Com NICs for them.
Placed my main machines inside a closet and ran extentions for the video, mouse, and keyboard to an omnicube to switch between them.
Set the ever so beautiful 3(4)86 boxes in the computer shelves of mine and my wifes desks with an extra one of the floor beside my desk and ran dummy cables to the outlets in the back.
And of course, locked the closet with the main systems in it.
I know this isn't real security, only obscurity, but it does serve it's purpose. I picked the idea up from a friend of mine in Sterling Hts. Michigan who had someone break into his house. They took his 386 and monitor but left his real machine which was locked in a hollowed out filing cabinet sitting next to his desk. Which insurance payed for a new monitor and computer. (wonder if that was legal). But never the less it worked. I on the other hand have two extra large based cooling fans in the closet on thermostats to keep the temp in the closet down. I am running 1 server and 2 workstations, plus a firewall, all hidden in that locked closet.
As of today no one has broken in, and I hope they never do. But while I am at work I have a little peace of mind in knowing I have done what I could to protect what is probably on of the 5 largest investments in my life.