Burglar Nabbed By Backup Program

Bruce Perens writes "A Berkeley, California, burglar engineered his own arrest, and that of his girlfriend, when he stole a laptop and used it as his personal computer. He didn't realize that the laptop had an automatic backup program, and that the photos he took were being copied to his victim's backup repository. Berkeley police recognized him, and his location, from the photos."

Comments

Getting to be a cliche

[gbulmash]

How many times do we have to see this story? There's the famous stolen SideKick from June 2006, then a few months later there was this story about a stolen phone that automatically mailed pics to Flickr, and on and on and on. This is becoming a cliche "stupid thief" story.

Re:Getting to be a cliche

[rarel]

If I had to venture a guess, I'd say the dupes come from the backup repository every few month automatically.

Re:Getting to be a cliche

[Nick Ives]

Amateur criminals will always be funny. The real joke here is that the thief didn't pass the laptop onto a fence straight away, keeping and using things you've stolen is the dumbest thing to do if you're a thief!

Re:Getting to be a cliche

[rackserverdeals]

I mean, how hard is to reformat a pc?

And how was he going to get windows back on it? Just because he's a thief, doesn't mean he's a pirate. :)

Re:Getting to be a cliche

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Note to self: steal the OS install disk too.

Re:Getting to be a cliche

[Dr_Barnowl]

If the owner was complying with the Windows EULA, the license sticker was firmly applied to the computer, so he only needs a install disk ; the serial number is already there.

Re:Getting to be a cliche

[IBBoard]

Well, all he needs is an OEM install disk for the right edition. I've tried an OEM license with a Retail disk after wiping a laptop and it won't work (even thought they're the same product and it was the serial from the bottom). Much easier to install Linux instead ;)

Re:Getting to be a cliche

[somersault]

Well, murder, rape, war, bent politicians, celebrity news etc are all pretty cliched too but the media outlets insist on reporting on them day after day.. and that's why I am not interested in most so called "news". Slashdot is usually fairly interesting, and this is in idle at least.

Re:Getting to be a cliche

[ae1294]

keeping and using things you've stolen is the dumbest thing to do if you're a thief!

Honestly not really man. Leaving all of the serial numbers and not doing a full wipe is dumb. Trying to find someone to fence your stolen equipment too can really backfire on you not to mention they take a huge cut. The fence isn't going to be any brighter than you and when the cops grab him you can expect to be next...

Moral of this story is steal stuff that you understand well enough to insure it can not be traced back to who you stole it from. And remember children not having a receipt for something doesn't mean you stole it. Missing serial numbers don't mean a thing unless it's a car or a gun. And always know your rights and the laws you are breaking before hand.

A product here?

[jimmyhat3939]

The question is whether there's some product that could be installed for this specific purpose. Laptops with webcams seem like they'd be a reasonable target. Also, I seem to recall something being installed right into the bios to facilitate this sort of recovery. Or even something involving MAC addresses. Most thieves aren't smart enough to change those, and on a laptop I'm not sure you could even really do that in hardware (though I know you can do it in software, on linux at least)

Re:A product here?

[Nikker]

Since this is /., 1 cron job and an addition to your /etc/rc.local(or distro equiv.) would do the trick. You could first use mencoder to capture and video sources (using command line it will take snaps at intervals all on its own) and rsync as you cron job taking the diffs of the whole drive to online storage, bonus points to trigger a sync the moment the network route becomes available. Nifty idea would be to set up a gmail account and use it to store incremental backups rather than the original image, 7-8 GB of diffs could likely go a long way.

Re:A product here?

[HydroPhonic]

You don't need a backup to facilitate recovery- just transmission of the fresh data. If my girlfriend's laptop ever disappears, the keylogger I've conveniently installed on it might be enough :)

The AntiVir and Spybot installations on this machine are configured with exceptions for this exact product, and it will reliably send me keylogs, web histories, and screenshots every 20 minutes (or whenever it finds a connection). But it doesn't capture from the webcam....

Re:A product here?

[Twinky]

I do sincerely hope your girlfriend knows about this. Does she?

Re:A product here?

[dangitman]

Since this is /., 1 cron job and an addition to your /etc/rc.local(or distro equiv.) would do the trick.

Unless it's a Mac, as soon as the thief discovers it has Linux installed, he's going to wipe the system and install Windows, and cron or your scripts won't be available.

Re:A product here?

[Jjeff1]

Yes, there is a product, computrace makes a product that is installed at the BIOS level on a lot of corporate level laptops. Even if you replace the hard drive, it reinstalls itself.

You mean the ski mask doesn't work anymore?

[Bob_Who]

I don't see how the cops could recognize him with the ski mask on... Oh yeah, the fuzz can see right through your cloths now. He better wear metal armor next time, or an aluminum foil hat..

Well that's just stupid

[drsquare]

You don't use the laptop you steal, you sell it down the pub or gut it for parts.

Amateur.

Re:one douchebag down, a billion to go

[interkin3tic]

A billion? My God, then one out of every 6 people has stolen a laptop!

Which backup program

[cerberusss]

To make this idle thread slightly more interesting, can people recommend some backup programs? It should work on my GFs Vista desktop and should upload the backup somewhere offsite, preferably my own SSH-enabled server.

Re:Which backup program

[David Gerard]

Cygwin does crontabs very nicely to do all sorts of Unixy things. It's a fantastic way to make a Windows box halfway sanely usable. Particularly if you set up sshd.

Re:Which backup program

[asdf7890]

Cygwin does crontabs very nicely to do all sorts of Unixy things. It's a fantastic way to make a Windows box halfway sanely usable. Particularly if you set up sshd.

Seconded. rsync+ssh is great for backups either directly on Unix-a-like systems or via the CygWin distribution on Windows. Setup is a bit manual of course, but if you have the time you can use the tools to create a very flexible and reliable setup.

Perfectly theft proof

[TiggertheMad]

can people recommend some backup programs? It should work on my GFs Vista desktop

If you are hoping to be able to re-create the scenario described in the article, you have nothing to worry about. Putting Vista on your girlfriend's computer has just insured that NOBODY will ever try to steal it...

Oh come on

[Bigbutt]

Look, if it was one of _our_ laptops, the crook wouldn't be able to log in to take pictures. I know my Windows (and Mac and Linux and BSD...) systems have login prompts of some sort and guest is disabled. The crook would open it, turn it on, see a login screen, try a couple of things, bang his (or her) fists impotently, and then sell it to someone.

[John]