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

Look at the way many people treat their laptops

[elrous0]

Considering the cavalier way many people treat laptops and projectors, I'm not surprised. No one would think of leaving $3000-$4000 in cash just laying around in the open. But I've seen plenty of people where I work leave brand new laptops and projectors sitting out in the open, unattended for long periods.

In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, one of our directors went on vacation and left his laptop and projector just sitting on the conference room where he had last used it (a large, wide-open conference room used by hundreds of outside people each week). They sat there for several days before anyone noticed.

Re:Look at the way many people treat their laptops

[tommeke100]

people don't care when they don't have to pay for it.
It's the same at our company. You wouldn't believe the state some of our laptops are after just a couple of months. cracked screens, missing keyboard keys, full of spyware, coffee spilled all over it, ....
I don't think ppl would treat their laptops that poorly if they had to pay for it.

Laptops are easy

[necro81]

For the bold and motivated thief, walking in and then out with a laptop is easy. Just look like you are supposed to be there. Slipping it into a briefcase helps with the illusion.

On the other hand, someone waltzed off with a 24" LCD monitor from the desk of a co-worker not long ago. His office was the furthest in from the door, so someone needed to be particularly bold to go all the way in, disconnect the monitor, and walk back out. No one saw him either, which is impressive considering the size of the load he was carrying. It's a lot harder to look and act natural about carrying a large monitor than a laptop.

Not really news

[Opportunist]

I was working in a high security environment. You know, the whole thing with magnetic cards, guards sitting there and watching people going in and out of the building, timestamps everywhere, in short, the company knew down to a second where you've been all day.

Or rather, where your key card has been.

You guess what happened? Exactly. One of those cards was stolen, one of the high level IT cards to boot, and the thief just waltzed in and went out with 2 servers. Nobody bothered to ask him what he's doing there. He has access to highly sensitive areas, so why bother asking why he's hauling around servers. That's his job, you know?

When nobody is supposed to do something, nobody expects anything's wrong when someone does what isn't supposed to be done. Especially in a high rotation hire and fire environment. Do you think anyone would question it when you put on a uniform and a trainee button and just go behind the counter of some fast food restaurant? Just tell everyone you're the new guy and avoid the manager.

It works.