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"Back To My Mac" Catches a Thief
robipilot writes "Mac stolen, Mac comes online, owner connects using 'Back to My Mac,' owner takes picture of culprit, and voila, criminal caught. OK, it wasn't quite that simple, but here's an interesting story of using some built-in technology on the Mac to recover a stolen laptop."
Thousands of peepholes for the guys in Cupertino to look through...
What?
I'm curious to know how would taking a picture of a musical instrument help in this matter...
Glad to see all those silly little programs aren't so silly after all.
Please explain what the features built into Windows are that would provide such advantage.
Yeah. I thought so. I am not saying Mac OS X is better, I am simply stating that your post is ignorant, stupid, and lacks a decent point.
Yep ! Viola is french for rape. And voilà is written with an accent.
Anyone else a little concerned that this could be used to spy on you if it becomes compromised?
RTFA. It puts a timer on the screen and by the time the thief realized what was going on it was too late for him to cover the lens.
would the original poster mind putting up an article that is locked behind registration !
Wouldn't the first thing you'd want to do is format the machine? I highly doubt this laptop would have been returned if some basic ... maintenance... had been preformed. And for the extra paranoid... purchase a new system board would all but guarantee the thing would never come back.
This makes me think a good idea would be to have some software running on my laptop that invisibly records it's IP address to a log file on an external server. This should be enough in most cases to get a pretty good idea of the location of the laptop when the thief boots it. Might even lead to an exact location if the ISP was forthcoming. Has this idea been thought of? Is it in use? Obvious problems with the idea?
did something like this in 2000. See p. 15 of this 3 MB zipped Powerpoint.
See also P-p-p-Powerbook! for a possible laugh.
#!
I know, this being Slashdot we have to worry about the privacy issues, compare the Mac to somebody's Vista laptop, disparage the cops, fret about security in general, and not fail to point out that a viola is indeed a stringed instrument.
But there's just something so damned satisfying about imagining these two thugs being caught red-handed with the loot. There's the impression of the victim realizing that she may be onto something. Her "Now I've got you, you son of a bitch!" as the fatal snap takes place. The "Oh, shit" realization of the thief, probably followed by frantic thoughts of how he might go about flushing two widescreen TV's and assorted recreational electronics. The genuine gratification of being able to walk into the police station and say, "Here are photographs of the guys who ripped off our stuff, actually using some of our stuff, and we know who they are..." Perhaps then the THUD THUD THUD at the malefactors' door.
It's got all the elements of the classic cautionary tale, and just reading it should bring at least a brief and sarcastic smile to the face of anybody who's ever been robbed.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
so whats to stop a unruly script kiddie from gaining access to your mac and noting your account info or watching personal activities with your wife/hubby.
:-)
The same thing that stops said people from breaking into any VPN. The strength of your password, along with the need to know a valid account.
I also do not leave laptops open and pointing at me during "personal activities". It would take a mighty hacker indeed to break into a sleeping Macbook and raise the lid via remote connection. I guess if you turned on the screen real bright, the force of all the photons emitted might slowly raise the screen....
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It was nice of those guys to stand in front of her computer and pose for her like they were in mug shots. It's almost like they knew they did something wrong! Oh wait...
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
Install faraday cage in macbook chop shop.
Alternatively, wear Nixon mask while chopping (I am not a crook!).
I can't remember the last time I forgot anything.
She took a picture of a viola?
This has been done several times before, on Mac and other platforms. Does anyone remember the original backdoor software for windows 10 years ago?
This just looks like a bunch of Apple marketing hype. Nothing new here folks.
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
a) She lives on Ridgeview Avenue.
b) She's at the edge of the city's downtown.
c) Many of the homes in the area have been renovated recently.
d) She lives in a colonial-style house.
e) The house is diagonally opposite a church.
If that's not enough info: One of the laptops was a Macintosh belonging to Kait Duplaga, who works at the Apple store in the Westchester mall and thus knows how to use all its bells and whistles. Just tail her from where she works.
The only info in this that's actually relevant is the fact that she works at an Apple store, and that's she did not wish to be interviewed. The rest is either a reporter padding an article with irrelevant information, or attempting to indirectly violate her right to privacy.
Either way, very poor journalism.
Don't tell me to get a life. I had one once. It sucked.
This is Slashdot. Many laptop using geeks have them open, turned on and pointing at them during "personal activities" in orgies with Playmates and supermodels.
I guess it was the Emperor Nero effect, so he needed a violin to chill out about his Mac being stolen.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It is for this reason that i have OpenVPN and a running SSH server on my laptop.
And yes, the endpoint is firewalled off...so thieves shall not be sneaking into my network over it.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
In the early days of webcams I used to work for this tech company, the bos (a techofile) had just set up a webcam from his computer in the London office to his computer in the New York office. He then flow to New York, a cople of guys and I where working quite late, when I see this other junior guy sat in the boss's chair saying with his legs on the boss's desk imitating the boss's voice "I am the boss and I am gay". When suddenly the computer screen turned on and he saw the boss telling him "YOU ARE FIRED". It was so funny to see this guy's face! (in fairness, the boss was gay ...)
add to that that she took a photo instead of just using printscreen.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
No, "viola" doesn't mean anything in french. "Viol" means rape.
Undercover does this sort of thing. It transmits network information, screenshots, and pictures from Macs with iSights. http://www.orbicule.com/undercover/
*blinking cursor*
It's not Back to My Mac that costs $99 a year, it's .Mac, which contains Back to My Mac.
A block of code, sufficiently well-written, is indistinguishable from magick.
I might also add that there is a built-in VNC server that can be enabled free. Back to My Mac just makes it easier to get to it when you're dealing with NAT and firewalls.
The thing is, most people haven't enabled a password to log into their computer or to wake it from sleep mode. It certainly is smart to have a login password, but the vast vast majority don't, and most also don't even realize that you [i]can[/i] have one.
I was thinking about something like this for a while, and this is a practical example, albeit, with different technology.
Did anyone see the movie, with Patrick Stewart, "Safe House?" To make a long story short, he has to enter a password every day to ensure an automated system does not activate. If he ever fails to enter that password, the system assumes he's dead and will let loose damaging blackmail that keeps him alive.
Anyway, a system like that would be very cool for home users. A small "safe house" program that gets run at startup that prompts for a password and gives you a number of tries. If the password is unsuccessful, the camera is activated, and web cam photos are sent to a known server when the network comes up, along with sound as well. Possibly key strokes and new documents web traffic and sites. All this happens quietly, in fact, there is no feedback as to the password being unsuccessful after the second try.
This information, along with the IP address, can be used to identify the thief and recover the property.
Try http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106439
4500 UDP
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Well, it's the verb to rape (violer) at the third person of the simple past. A bit far fetched, but technically right...
I run Ubuntu on my home PCs and changed the default login screen to list the users. I created a 'Guest' account and in it's description I put 'Password = 123qwe' (not the real password). The assumption is that a burglar , not knowing much about OS'es, will want to use the PC and will choose the easiest path to gain access. When they turn the PC on the login screen gives them a list of users and an option of choosing "Guest Account with the Password shown. All household users have been told to *never* use this account and why.
This 'Guest' account is CharRooted and has Firefox, IM and other Internet clients all on the desktop but that's about it. Under the hood it opens up SSH, VNC, Terminal Server and every other conceivable way of gaining access. It starts a script that every 30 minutes emails my Gmail account with IP address and connection information. Also, logging on to this account invokes a 'Nuke' scrip that will DBAN type wipe the system if I don't deactivate it within 7 days.
It's not a perfect solution but it has all the capabilities and features of the subscription tracking services that can cost hundreds a year and it's all pretty easy to setup. If any thief steals my PC and uses it to connect to the Internet I will know everything about their connection and have full access to the machine. If it's truly lost and I can't regain control after they login, it self destructs.
Now that I thinks about it, this should be a Ubuntu package or at least a HowTO.
-[d]-
If you steal a computer, unless you are after its data, REFORMAT it first.
even if it doesn't have some sort of tracing, it might have a virus.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
IIRC, SGI did this back in the mid-90s. There had been many repeated computer thefts from the building and surrounding buildings, so they put some motion detection s/w onto an SGI Indy to record anything that moved. All Indy's shipped with a webcam - I think they were one of the first to do so.
Worked like a charm, apparently.
This was at their HQ in Reading, UK. I heard about this second hand, so I don't know the details.
Max.
The software to do the whole method she used is built into Mac OS X, so it's not just the camera. It's the dynamic remote access software combined with the camera that did it.
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
This experience has taught me to never steal someone's macbook on the rare occasion I don't have electrical tape in my backpack.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
I've already got my laptop making hourly requests to a non-existent image on a website I control. So if it ever goes walking, I might get an IP address from that. As someone pointed out, I might want to create a guest account, so that the thief would be willing to use the laptop as-is.
But what other sensory information does my laptop have? One thought: Wifi. Even before it connects, it can give you the names of wireless networks nearby. If you could somehow upload that list to a server you control, there is a small chance you might be able to wardrive your way to victory. But command-line wifi utilities seem to be rare. Any ideas?
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Did anyone see the movie, with Patrick Stewart, "Safe House?"
I don't know if it ever played in theatres - I found it in the bargain bin at a walmart - too bad, I thought it was a great little movie.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
There is a Linux program called 'motion' that works pretty good. http://www.lavrsen.dk/twiki/bin/view/Motion/WebHome
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It's not "built into" the Mac, it's a $99/year subscription.
You've been able to get similar subscriptions for Windows for far longer than for OS X. And Linux has had this functionality built in for about a decade. I don't think that this is even the first case of recovering a laptop by using its webcam.
We care because I have it on good authority that women often use their Macs after having just come out of the shower, a good workout, being smeared in grits, rolling in Jell-O, bathing in whipped cream, and/or while do a self-breast exam. That's why we care!
You act like you haven't had your domain sqatted on by Jenny's Personal Co-Ed Webcam Sexperience after missing a payment that one time that it happened to me.
A Mac doesn't have a traditional PC-style BIOS. Instead what it has is called an EFI. EFI stands for Extensible Firmware Interface. This does essentially the same thing as BIOS.
Unless the owner has disabled alternate booting through the EFI, you can change anyone's Mac OS user password by booting with a Mac OS installer DVD and using a standard password utility to change the root password or any user password.
A program called Undercover will transmit pictures using the built-in iSight camera (with the green indicator light disabled - despite what other posters have said, you CAN transmit video and disable the indicator light in software) and also report back the public IP address of the illegitimate user. If the owner has disabled alternate booting through the EFI, this software is very difficult to remove.
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Why didn't you tell me this a few days ago before my laptop was stolen!
I'm resigned to checking the local pawnbrokers and looking on ebay. Sad thing is that they didn't take the power cable so it's next to useless, this IBM Thinkpad R40e has 30 seconds of battery life (awesome ain't it)! That means the laptop is probably in a skip / river somewhere whilst I rue missing backing up last week!
But the fucking New York Times has screwed her over again. First the article describes what was stolen from her home (thanks for the inventory). Then it describes where she lives, including nearby landmarks! So now anyone else that might wants another crack at her place knows where to find it. Including friends and relatives of the accused!!
Nothing beats being made a victim for having a brain and knowing how to use it! Thanks so much NYT :(
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
Amoung the things a Mac can do, is run Windows in a window. But in this case, The Mac had enough hardware and software support to aid in its recovery. We know there are lojack programs out there we can buy for money and install. In this case, the built in support was goof enough. I suppose the thief is a VICTIM because he didn't authorize his picture to be taken? I am sorry they didn't post the thief's picture on the Internet. I LOL about the thought of the the thief realizing his picture was about to be taken. HA HA HA.
(Too lazy to lower my comment threshold) but if you're interested in setting up Back to My Mac without a .Mac subscription, check our this article.
Bark less. Wag more.
But option-shift-k has always been a fine way to type the apple logo for those who cant stop calling it the "apple key."
-- thinkyhead software and media
Well, it worked out well for her in this instance. I would imagine that anyone wanting to make use of any such software as this, will also have to remove their login passwords. I guess i should put a big notice on my laptop saying finger print scanner, so that nobody will try to steat it (it is an IBM, so there is no chance they are getting in).
sorry everybody!
-mkb
If someone gains physical access to your Mac laptop it doesn't matter if you've set a password or not. They can connect its firewire port to another Mac and reboot it in Target mode to gain full access to the hard drive. They can start it up in single-user mode and set any password they want or change permissions on any files and folders.
The thieves had no savvy, that much is certain.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Bad argument. Try again, and at least study up before you give false support.
this reminds me of New Yorkers using cell phone cameras to help prevent rape and other crimes. i hope i never have to do this, but glad to know i can. - Georgia Giatras
good to know, good to know. Trent Decatur