The Khaki Bandit Strikes At IT - 130 Stolen Laptops

destinyland writes "'The khaki bandit' posed as an office worker at several corporations and successfully stole over 130 laptops which he later sold on eBay. The ease of theft from the corporate offices (including FedEx and Burger King) shows just how bad corporate security can be. In some cases, the career thief just walked into the office behind an employee with a security badge. Two million laptops were stolen just in 2004, and of those 97 percent were never recovered. Ultimately it was the corporate headquarters of Outback Steakhouse who caught the thief with a bugged laptop that notified them when he re-connected it to the internet."

Comments

Re:Look at the way many people treat their laptops

[Four_One_Nine]

Apparently in most business we trust most people to not steal laptops, projectors, LCD monitors, etc.

However it seems that NOWHERE in corporate America does any company trust it's employees (at least the male ones) to not steal the paper towels out of the mens room. The dispenser is ALWAYS locked up !

Re:$150 a laptop?

[Funkcikle]

Oh dear. Who will lead the OLPC initiative now that Nicholas Negroponte is in jail?

check sunnyvale

[pak9rabid]

This sounds like something Ricky and Julian, er, I mean Cory and Trevor would pull

Re:Look at the way many people treat their laptops

[j-pimp]

It seems that NOWHERE in corporate America does any company trust it's employees (at least the male ones) to not steal the paper towels out of the mens room. The dispenser is ALWAYS locked up !

It really comes down to the fact that paper towel technology has reached the point that the right balance of security and usability has been achieved. In IT we have to pick an extreme.

Re:Laptops are easy

[oyenstikker]

Walk in, slap a big yellow sticker on it that says "Repair Ticket" in big letters, and carry it out.

Re:And here's how he was caught:

[Anne_Nonymous]

>> how the guy was caught

It was an Outback Steak-Out.

Re:absolute crap

[antifoidulus]

Or you could set your wallpaper to the goatse man, get a custom goatse case mod, goatse keyboard...Nobody will want to touch that laptop!

Security at my company is good!

[internetcommie]

It consists of never buying new equipment unless it is absolutely necessary, and then buying second-hand if at all possible.
If a thief made it into the building and walked out with all the computers here, he might make $150 on ebay if lucky.
But he'd be more likely to just get a hernia.

Try airport mainframes

[Simon]

Laptops are for pussies. Try mainframes from international airports:

The brazen airport computer theft that has Australia's anti-terror fighters up in arms

--
Simon

Re:$150 a laptop?

[Artifakt]

I like it: "Stealization". Let's spredulate this meme.

Re:$150 a laptop?

[mrslacker]

memeization?

Illegal wiretap

[SnarfQuest]

This is another case of an illegal wiretap of American citizens! They did not get a warrent from the FISA court before installing the software on his laptop, making it completely illegal. This is an abuse of private citizens by an overzealous government! This poor fellow should be immediately freed, his criminal history cleared, and an apology with monetary reimbursements for his trouble! The owners of the Outback Steakhouse should immediately be imprisoned for casuing this travesty of justice!

Re:And here's how he was caught:

[jollyreaper]

With a street address in hand, police can make an arrest. The corporate version of the software gives subscribers the ability to remotely delete sensitive information from a computer. Laptops are only worth a few thousand bucks, a reputation is priceless. I say put Sony batteries in the fuckers. Once you have the thief pegged, send a remote command to detonate. Nobody but nobody is going to steal from you after you blow up a thief. And if you've got a webcam built into the thing, put his final moments on youtube.

Re:Two million in one year?

[Joe the Lesser]

My bad. My friend and I have a competition to see how many times we steal this one laptop from each other. Everytime he goes to the bathroom I grab it from his cubicle...that's probably throwing the numbers off.