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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."
haha
Um, Darwin awards? Unfortunately, criminals are still allowed to procreate and spread their genes. So unless he's either dead or rendered an eunuch, we're still screwed. -W
use driverguide or google, ya moron!
proud caffeine whore
Geez, talk about a close call for people living in Misery...I mean Missouri
Why the Department of Revenue uses a laptop with sensitive information, making easier to stole than a desktop?
Inquiring minds want to know...
Slashdot ya no es que lo era!
Probably used too much leaded gasoline when he was younger.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
...My current province of residence uses a standard Fargo ID printer to crank out Driver's Licenses. I happen to have a Fargo printer for my current workplace.
It would take NOTHING in terms of effort to crank out fake ID's - hell, the province in question (at least at this point) doesn't even use any fort of hologram or anything to secure the ID.
I mean, this guy is braindead for calling for tech support to use his stolen goods - but at least through his stupidity & security measures they caught him. If I was an ass, I could easily crank off what I wanted to without anyone being the wiser.
(Posted as AC, not because I do anything wrong, but I'd rather not have anyone realize the stupidity of this province & take advantage of it just out of my location in profile)
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.
"Hello tech support, yes I'll hold" KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK "Hmmm must be the pizza"
The Australian University of Newcastle Engineering Department once had a undergraduate lab of Sony NEWS BSD Unix workstations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_NEWS , possibly one of the first institutions in the country to roll out such a setup. As you may of guessed, the lab was soon broken into and several of the machines stolen.
About a week later, Sony Australia Support got a call.. from someone asking how they could install MSDOS onto the machines. The Rep handling the NEWS said they could courier and C.O.D replacement diskettes to the caller... got their address, and then said "Actually, could you do me a favour, and please return those stolen computers to the University of Newcastle..."
I believe the intent is to say that he will end up as a Darwin Award winner in the future, even if he hasn't yet managed the feat.
No one should call Tech Support - it's too frustrating.
Well that would be true if, as shown on TV and movies, criminals are fiendishly clever Snidely Whiplashes, twirling their thin mustaches slowly as they ponder deeply the implications of their next criminal caper.
But they're not. Pretty much anyone with an IQ above 90 figures out before he's 12 that crime does not pay, in the long run, and he goes into other lines of business as an adult. That doesn't mean he has to give up being antisocial or deploying his uglier personality traits to advantage, of course. Would-be rapists and contract murderers can become divorce lawyers, bullshit artists and con-men can go into subprime lending or telemarketing, and so forth. You can be a very successful legitimate businessman instead of a crook with some fairly small adjustments in your choice of victim and methodology.
So as a rule those we have left in the actual criminal class tend to be irredeemably stupid, the kind who pull stunts like this -- and who would not learn anything useful by reading the story, since they lack the ability to generalize the lesson.
So the Secret Service just happened to be listening to the tech support line, hoping to recognize a criminal voice? I believe this is what they call a "buried lead" - the story should be, Secret Service Listens to Tech Support Lines. I assume, perhaps naively, that the secret service was listening in on the hope that their thief would call, and that they therefore had a warrant, but this un-addressed bit of the story is disturbing to me. My first question was "how did the Secret Service agent hear the voice to begin with?" Maybe he was moonlighting as a phone support monkey.
And here I thought getting printer drivers from HP was tough.
Reminds me a bit of former UK pop star Gary Glitter. His career ended in tatters after a PC World technician discovered child porn on his PC while repairing it. Easily the best example of why criminals shouldn't call tech support (especially when you keep incriminating evidence on your bloody computer...)
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I don't get it, can you Show Me?
music lover since 1969
This is funny and all. But I can't help but wonder how often this kind of thing goes on that we aren't aware of and is perpetrated by non-Darwin candidates. I mean, news is only "news" when it's interesting and unusual (given that it's usually reported by a for-profit institution).
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
A positive result from calling vendor tech support! And resolution in record time!
Free Adam Smith! (Or best offer.)
Had he been able to get the printer working with his computer, he probably would've promptly made a posting to his local Facebook network reading: "HAY GUYS I CAN HOOK YOU UP W/ FAKE ID LOL" and been busted anyway.
I think he's outdone by the the Chinese gang who took £26billion of fake English notes (in the non-existant £500,000 denomination) to the Bank of England and asked for it in current currency. How stupid do you have to be to take fake, non-existant currency to the Bank of England to convert it to current money? That's the central bank in England, and issues all the currency.
I remember a few years back when a group of preps and jocks from the local private school were busted for selling fake IDs. These kids' mommies and daddies had their bank accounts stuffed well enough for them to afford to properly produce, en mass, said IDs. The fakes were so perfectly manufactured that the only way anyone ever caught on is that the drunken little snobs failed to spell "license" correctly!
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
At this particular university the networking equipment we had (DEC repeaters) didn't have the subnetting capabilities to split nthe "business" side of the network from the "student" side of the network. Thus, until the network equipment was to be upgraded over the following summer, students were required to have an Intel, 3Com, or Xircom NICs to reduce the chance of some off-brand card storming the network. Of course, this rule was unpopular with students since these cards tended to cost a bit more than the PowerPipes cards available at Best Buy's bargain bin for $4.99. We kept track of the MAC addresses of students' cards to avoid the "Hey, let me borrow your MAC address" and also had a table that we updated with the first 3 pairs of octets in the MAC address. So, to say we enforced this policy with due diligence is an understatement.
The machines we had for the people who conducted university business were also equipped with 3Com cards. We always inventoried these machines upon arrival and saved the MAC addresses in the database as well to keep people from borrowing one from the lab machines. Yes, the process was annoying and, as I said, it was eliminated once the network equipment was replaced.
My boss, the helpdesk manager, tried in vain to search the repeaters for the missing lab machine's MAC address. Finally, one Friday about 2 weeks after the computer disappeared we decided to try again on a lark.
Bingo! We found the machine coming off of a port in one of the residence halls. A quick call to the university police and we were on our way over to the room where the MAC address was currently being used.
The guy who was in the room at the time denied having stolen anything and granted the officer permission to search. The officer gave me the go-ahead to open the student's machine and, lo and behold, there was the NIC with our MAC address on it (3Com does an excellent job of putting it top-center for easy reference). The student said that he purchased the card from a store and that it was his and that this whole thing was a huge misunderstanding...
After that the student was arrested on the spot. Last I heard he was expelled and was ordered to pay back the $1500 cost of the machine (he had taken a few choice parts and tossed the rest. It was a Gateway; I would have done the same).
It just goes to show that even the smart ones get caught from time to time. If you're going to steal technology it's probably best to get the hell out of dodge after doing so and NOT call tech support or, in this case, plus a stolen NIC into the network.
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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.
Just out of curiousity: /. to learn that people don't RTFA.
Did you buy your relatively low ID from someone on ebay?
I mean... it doesn't take too much time on
Your ad could be here!
Can't print a drivers license without the drivers. Can't get drivers without a drivers license.
10 years for stealing a printer? Seems a little harsh.
Try swiping a "Printer" from Fort Knox.. It's the intended application and who it was stolen from is the problem. It was an ID printer. If you want years, grap a printing press and the plates for a few $20's from Fort Knox. It is not the same as stealing a newsprint press or an HP inkjet.
The truth shall set you free!
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.