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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.

12 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. What remote access technology? by Max_W · · Score: 5, Interesting
    How could be this done? How could he connect to his laptop without knowing the IP address?

    I use remote access, but I have to type in the IP address to connect. How could he knew the I address?

    I read this story several times but nowhere the software name is mentioned.

    1. Re:What remote access technology? by ZeroNullVoid · · Score: 1, Interesting

      H to the A to da M to de A to uh um for the C H I.

      The Buri is the Japanese Yellow tail.
      A fine sushi.

  2. Plans within plans? by TiberSeptm · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Doesn't this mean that the guy who had his laptop stolen also didn't bother to set a login or boot password? One might argue that he deduced that a boot password or login password might just get his drive wiped by a clever thief. He may have even st up the remote access partly to act as a way to catch thieves and get it back if it was ever lost. He could have even used fairly strong encrpytion to protect most of his data. Of course anyone arguing for the assumption that his sercurity plans were a series of complex plans within plans must have missed the part where he left it on and in his unlocked car.

  3. You think you've seen stupid? by mcrbids · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In nearby Oroville, CA, a thief robbed a bank at gunpoint, took off with several thousand dollars in cash, and then returned later in the day - to the same bank - to deposit the cash into his own bank account.

    no, I'm not kidding.

    (And this text box for idle just teh suxorz)

    --
    I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
  4. article icon by v1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They did a poor job of airbrushing the apple off the back of that macbook.

    --
    I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
  5. Not all reformats help by apankrat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Q. Can ComputracePlus be detected?

    A. .. snip .. The Agent can survive a hard drive re-format, F-disk command and hard drive re-partitioning.

    http://www.absolute.com/computraceplus/faqs.asp

    --
    3.243F6A8885A308D313
    1. Re:Not all reformats help by William+Robinson · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The same page say something like...

      The Computrace Agent communicates with modems through the Microsoft TAPI interface.

      So, probably it works only if you reinstall Windows (though I would love to know how do they do it).

      I would doubt if it survives after booting Livecd, make hard disk complete ext3fs, and then reinstall Windows.

      --
      hilarious
    2. Re:Not all reformats help by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      An Option ROM is loaded into the BIOS that checks for the existence of the application. I can attest to the fact that it does get reinstalled and installed on a new Windows OS even if a different drive is used. This can be removed, however, with some BIOS editing apps.

      We had a user's laptop stolen from an airport security check with Computrace installed fairly recently. The problem is that Absolute Software claim the system is out of their jurisdiction and, once reported stolen, you cannot see the IP address that a system reports in. This leaves no way to verify that the system isn't actually being used at your local Starbucks. Even though we're out of an investment, we can still see username changes as the tool continues to report in. It is like someone stealing your car and driving it by your house at 8PM each night. It's pretty frustrating to know that we have serial numbers associated to every component and have a 3 year warranty only to be told that "we'll let you know if something comes up".

    3. Re:Not all reformats help by jimicus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There is custom hardware. It's built into the BIOS on most modern Dell laptops.

  6. Re:Who is more clever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Those who are smart enough to extract private files from a swap partition have better things to do than stealing unattended laptops.

  7. Re:They want easy by heteromonomer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is there a software that has a 1-step procedure to activate all the stuff you mentioned? Activate the camera, mic, monitor his internet movements and even capture keystrokes?

  8. Complete format by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I wonder if CoreBios could be used to include some sort of TCP-IP enabled remote administration tool into the BIOS itself, so even if the thief completely formats you'd still be kept up to date :)