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Note To Criminals — Don't Call Tech Support
Billosaur writes "Darwin Awards, here he comes: Ars Technica has up a story about a would-be identity thief who did himself in by calling tech support about printer drivers. Timothy Short must have thought he'd hit the mother-lode when he stole a PC and a Digimarc printer from the Missouri Department of Revenue, perhaps with dreams of cranking out thousands of fake ids. Problem: he could not unlock the computer he stole and without the necessary drivers, he couldn't use the printer. Ever resourceful, Short called Digimarc tech support a couple of days later (twice), which brought him to the attention of a Secret Service agent, who recognized his voice from a recording of the calls. Short now faces a $250,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison."
This is funny, really funny. But it's not Darwin funny which unless I'm mistaken are feats of stupidity which remove you from the gene pool. Stealing a ID printer and asking for drivers, to make fake IDs, while funny it isn't as funny as trying to steal the legs off an abandoned yet erect water tower.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Same reason anyone uses a laptop; mobility. Revenue employees need to take data out of the office and into the field to conduct on-site audits and make collections. I work with a State revenue agency that was really worried about losing one of these laptops. They just got through implementing a third-party encryption scheme to protect the data on the hard drives from prying eyes.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Naw, just a lengthy process...the 700mb printer driver downloads are a bit of a drag.
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
Or "Why would the Department of Revenue use a laptop for sensitive information, making it easier to steal than a desktop?" since the type of computer equipment in the frame of usage is the subject, not the equipment itself with the modifier of sensitive information being on it.
A far better sentence would have been "Why would the Department of Revenue keep sensitive information on a laptop, where it is easier to steal, than on a desktop?"
One might conclude that the Service listened to a recording of the conversation. Many if not most tech support and customer service calls are recorded.
One way to spot a fake Texas DL is to check the word "Directive" (In the sentence "Directive to physician has been filed at tel #") on the back of the license. The first "i" will not have a dot.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
Actually I just checked mine, and since the authentic license (like mine) is missing the dot on that i, the fake will *have* the dot on the i. I guess that's what you meant to say.
http://www.eff.org/issues/printers
If you RTFA, it makes it entirely clear. But I guess that's just too much trouble. It has, like, words and stuff in it.
It was a specialized stolen printer, a kind intended to print government IDs. I don't think it was like your deskjet.
Microsoft says legacy (serial/parallel) ports are bad. They don't obfuscate the hardware enough.
UK spelling:
license = verb
licence = noun
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
Actually, he might not be as dumb as you think.
For a time, I worked at the subcontractor who manufactured the printers for Digimarc for their Missouri program. We customized the driver and firmware such that each printer had an "unlock code" individually keyed to each printer - basically a one way (computer->printer) public/private key encryption. The computer would get the public key, encrypt a "hello there" type message, and the printer would decrypt it with the private key. If you fail to encrypt it, nothing happens. If you encrypt it with the wrong key, nothing happens. So, it was implicitly tied to that workstation. If you can't get into that workstation, you can't print. If you try to print it on another machine, it doesn't work, even if you have the driver.
Now, you can always get the private key from the workstation, but we counted on the solution provider to secure the workstation, which it looks like they did in this case.