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Man Uses Remote Logon To Help Find Laptop Thief

Posted by samzenpus on from the cyber-bloodhound dept.

After his computer was stolen, Jose Caceres used a remote access program to log on every day and watch it being used. The laptop was stolen on Sept. 4, when he left it on top of his car while carrying other things into his home. "It was kind of frustrating because he was mostly using it to watch porn," Caceres said. "I couldn't get any information about him." Last week the thief messed up and registered on a web site with his name and address. Jose alerted the police, who arrested a suspect a few hours later. The moral of the story: never go to a porn site where you have to register.

7 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Makes sense by William+Robinson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Note to self: Remove remote access after stealing laptop!!!!

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    hilarious
  2. Re:Makes sense by Tubal-Cain · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If not reformat completely.

  3. Re:I'm surprised that the thief was so dumb. by darkonc · · Score: 3, Insightful
    We're talking about a thief here -- and a thief of opportunity, at that. This is no braniac master-criminal. They guy probably didn't know enough to create a new account, much less reformat the machine. Hell, even slightly above-average users might have a problem with that idea.

    I've seen a thief who was so stupid, that he stole a kid's bike from (directly!) across the back alley, and then left the stolen bike by the back door.
    He was, apparently, both surprised and indignant when the father of the child whose bike was stolen came over for a visit.... wielding a baseball bat.

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    Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
  4. They want easy by TheLink · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah. Thieves who steal laptops want _easy_.

    If they didn't mind hard they'd have got a job or started their own companies, or stolen something more challenging and rewarding ;).

    So what you do on your laptop is to create an account specially for thieves to use. Call it Honey if you like - with no password, or the password hint = instructions on how to get in.

    Then your own account has a password, to keep the thief out, from deleting your encrypted stuff etc.

    This way when the thief steals the laptop, they turn it on, click on "Your Account", get password prompt, click on Honey, get in straight - whoopee.

    Immediately the stuff is launched to log data about the thief and his surroundings - webcam, microphone set to record, and then the data is uploaded.

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  5. Re:Not all reformats help by setagllib · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Let's see it survive a Linux LiveCD.

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    Sam ty sig.
  6. Re:Not all reformats help by lhaeh · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I always found this hard to believe, someone wanna explain how that would work without custom hardware.Do they assume the bootloader will be left behind?

  7. Re:Not all reformats help by knifeNINJA · · Score: 3, Insightful
    From the FAQ:
    Computrace Agent Hardware & Operating System Requirements:
    ...
    Microsoft Windows 95, 98, ME, NT and the 32-bit versions of Windows 2000, XP, Windows Server 2003 and all 32 and 64 bit editions of Windows Vista
    ...
    Mac OS X version 10.2
    Looks like you're right. As to how it works, here's my guess:
    • When booting up, BIOS ensures program is properly installed on hard drive
    • If program is missing, BIOS reinstalls program + rootkit to cloak its presence
    • BIOS can only reinstall program + rootkit on OS's for which they have been compiled/configured
    • Program runs as a hidden service