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FBI Investigating Mystery Laptops Sent To US Governors
itwbennett writes "The FBI is trying to find out who is sending laptops to state governors across the US, including the governors of Wyoming and West Virginia. The West Virginia laptops were delivered to the governor's office on August 5, according to the Charleston Gazette, which first reported the story. Kyle Schafer, West Virginia's chief technology officer, says he doesn't know what's on the laptops, but he handed them over to the authorities. 'Our expectation is that this is not a gesture of good will,' he said. 'People don't just send you five laptops for no good reason.'"
If the governors don't want them, I'll have them.
Its obviously the one laptop per Governor project.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
"People don't just send you five laptops for no good reason."
Are you kidding me? I've received hundreds of free laptops from total strangers. In fact, I trust them so much that I do all my banking on them. After all, this nice downtrodden Nigerian prince has personally guaranteed the security and stability of all these laptops. Now, let me go check my bank balance....OMGWTFBBQ^*#^$@))*#$!!!!!
NO CARRIER
SSC
...at least give every incoming laptop to a nearby school. I mean, spying on students happens already anyway.
Support Eachother, Copy Dutch Property!
You get the laptops delivered to a big enough organisation, whoever signs for them assumes *somebody* ordered them for a reason, but can't find out who. So they stash them somewhere. Fast forwards to when someone new joins the organisation and needs a laptop, somebody mentions there are a couple lying around in boxes and bingo, you've got malware in through the front door without touching an Internet connection.
Makes me wonder, how often this has been done successfully to less vigilant offices, worked, and we haven't heard about it.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
What if whoever's sending them isn't just a small-time crook but a foreign intelligence agency with the resources to custom-make chips with built-in back doors. (Such back doors have been demonstrated to be plausible; someone has built a CPU with a circuit which switches off memory protection when it finds a specific sequence on a memory bus, which means that it doesn't matter how secure the software running on it is.)
Why would they target state governors' offices? Well, they'd presumably be easier to pwn than, say, the Department of Defence or the CIA, and a good starting point for setting up pieces.
Seriously, they don't have one good tech guy who could wipe the drives/check the internals for rogue hardware?
Not at a cost less than the price of one new laptop. Smart hardware people with time to prepare could hide just about any device just about anywhere. Or hide nothing at all just so people waste time looking for what isn't there.
I get the impression this is just a prank by someone with a little too much free cash and a bad sense of humor. Either that or a marketing thing by a laptop manufacturer.
Next week on CNN: Pen & Paper sent to US Governors in hopes that they'd do more work. FBI called in to investigate.
"A what? Whatever, put it in the yard next to the giant wooden horse."
Since the origin of the computers is unknown, the hardware cannot be trusted. The computers might be hacked and backdoored on the BIOS level. Modern BIOSes are quite sophisticated with a rich functionality, that can be misused invisibly from the OS' point of view.
This just in... It seems the governor's office was right to be wary. The FBI have confirmed that all the laptops are infected with Windows Vista Basic. Truly nasty.
Show me an IT monkey who could tell the difference between two standard network adapters, one of them fine and the other containing a counterfeit MAC/PHY IC that's been fucked with by Chinese intelligence services...
And for the time taken to vet the laptop for such things, you might as well throw it out.
On the other hand, if you actually did want to get government personnel using subverted hardware then I think just sending it to them anonymously is probably not a good way of going about it... so maybe the criminals aren't that smart. Or maybe that's what they want you to think?
"a delivered local wi-fi attack" is the best poetry I've read all day. Your lack of punctuation and capitalzation reminds me of e.e.cummings, and the unexpected Spielberg reference at the end is a stroke of genius. You should do poetry slams. (imagine "run superduper wi-fi haxor proggy" to the sound of a bass slapping. )
A likely explanation is that somebody either stole a credit card or cards or somehow ordered them fraudulently and is using this as a smokescreen. Send 10 laptops to 10 governors. Send 10 to random people including yourself. Profit! Or else an employee at one of the offices is in on it and wanted to cover themselves by sending them out to other offices.
I'm imagining it, but it's really hard to get a good rhythm out of a dead fish.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Go for the obvious. Someone is trying to get revenge on corporation "x" by purchasing a bunch of computers and having them drop shipped. By the time accounting catches up with the paperwork, the computers will be in the hands of the FBI for a month. If the scam is done right, it is done by an ex-employee or someone with just enough access to know who the preferred suppliers are. You make a couple of phone calls, send the right paperwork, and next thing your computer vendor is drop shipping a bunch of computers somewhere.
Having worked for distributors, I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often. Having stuff go missing for weeks on end inside factories, fairly routine ... This wouldn't be hard to do. Just ship a bunch of computers somewhere else.
It is even difficult to get charged for doing something like this. FAXing the paperwork leaves no fingerprints. To the accounting department, the transaction looks like typical incompetence. The corporation won't request charges laid, because then they would have to admit they were incompetent too, and this stuff happens all the time. The police have a tough time charging you, because you didn't steal anything. If done right, you didn't even touch anything so there is no physical evidence. No evidence means no crime, and your revenge makes the national newspapers. Perfect revenge scheme.
> Send a laptop to 10 people or you will have bad luck for 7 years. If you do send laptops to 10 people you will get your greatest wish!!
>
> A woman in Canada didn't send the laptops and now she is in prison for cheating on her taxes.
>
> A man in Kansas sent the 10 laptops and now has a new laptop!
>
> This is not a hoax or scam!! YOu HVAE TO SEND THIS!! 10 Laptops or something horrible will happens. Send it to all your friends!!!
> >
> > It's TRUE!! I got cancer when I didn't send the laptops, but then I sent them and now I have a million dollars!!!11
> >
> > Don't think this is a trick!! Just do it !1 Wjhat do you have to lose??
> >
> > Jack in Fredricksburgton
> >
> >
> > > I can't count the number of times I've sent out these kinds of Laptops and gotton NOTHIONG. But this is the real deal.
> > > You can't go wrong with this one. Think about it, you already got the laptop. You already have it...
> > > but dont' just accept the gift and not pass it on or your in for big troubles.
> > > >
> > > > Here is a free laptop. Pass this on to 10 friends and enjoy!
> > > >
> > > > Richard R.
When they turn 'em on, does it show some distorted video of a guy telling them to play nice, and to enjoy the new laptop?