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Retrieving a Stolen Laptop By IP Address Alone?
CorporalKlinger writes "My vehicle was recently burglarized while parked in a university parking lot in a midwestern state. My new Dell laptop was stolen from the car, along with several other items. I have no idea who might have done this, and the police say that without any idea of a suspect, the best they can do is enter the serial number from my laptop in a national stolen goods database in case it is ever pawned or recovered in another investigation. I had Thunderbird set up on the laptop, configured to check my Gmail through IMAP. Luckily, Gmail logs and displays the last 6 or 7 IP addresses that have logged into your account. I immediately stopped using that email account, cleared it out, and left the password unchanged — creating my own honeypot in case the criminal loaded Thunderbird on my laptop. Sure enough, last week Gmail reported 4 accesses via IMAP from the same IP address in a state just to the east of mine. I know that this must be the criminal who took my property, since I've disabled IMAP access to the account on all of my own computers. The municipal police say they can't intervene in the case since university police have jurisdiction over crimes that take place on their land. The university police department — about 10 officers and 2 detectives — don't even know what an IP address is. I even contacted the local FBI office and they said they're 'not interested' in the case despite it now crossing state lines. Am I chasing my own tail here? How can I get someone to pay attention to the fact that all the police need to do is file some RIAA-style paperwork to find the name associated with this IP address and knock on the right door to nab a criminal and recover my property? How can I get my laptop back — and more importantly — stop this criminal in his tracks?"
University cops do the bidding of the school...
Just call the RIAA and tell them that IP downloaded a song. They seem to be able to do all the John Doe stuff through the courts to find out who it was...
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Simply create a GUI interface using Visual Basic to track his IP address.
"The knee is the elbow of the leg." -- My wife
OMG, we tracerouted the IP address and it's coming from upstairs!
I don't think you can do much, and the sooner you put this sorry episode behind you the better.
Agreed. On an entirely unrelated note: I just got this new Dell laptop and it seems to be going to off to an e-mail server somewhere. Anybody have any idea how to make it stop doing that?
Come on CorporalKlinger - you know they're reading your mail - work with it. Do I have to get Radar to bail you out?
Bonus points if you pull a real Corporal Klinger and go in a dress. Either way, bring a camera. And a few friends. Make him wish he was in Toledo.
Post his IP address on 4chan, not here. Within minutes, they'll have his name, address, mother's maiden name, his high school yearbook picture photoshopped onto longcat, 50 pizza delivery guys on the way to his place, and the FBI at this guy's door to search his (your) laptop for child animal porn. ...or maybe that's not such a good idea.
Close.
Step 1: Use whois to find out the owning ISP.
Step 2: Use social engineering techniques as needed to obtain the direct telephone number for the wire center for the city in question.
Step 3: Call the wire center using a telephone from work (where caller ID is blocked) and use social engineering techniques, pretending to be from another part of the company (claim to be calling from the NOC in another state trying to track down rogue BGP packets from the specified IP number) and request that they disable the circuit. At some point, casually ask what circuit ID they disabled so that you can properly fill out the work order after the fact.
Step 4: Have another person call at the same time (preferably female) and ask them if [your fake name] had reached them about the aforementioned problem while you are still on the phone. This instills a sense of urgency.
Step 5: Upon obtaining the circuit ID, wait a day. Then use a similar social engineering technique (call until you get a different person) and tell them you're a line worker out in the field and you're trying to trace down a problem with incoming calls on circuit [insert circuit ID here]. Tell them that it's an E911 call center and you really need things fixed urgently, but you don't have the direct dial phone number associated with that circuit ID. Obtain the phone number for the circuit.
Step 6: Using a reverse number lookup, determine the street address of the person in question.
Step 7: Drive to the address in question.
Step 8: Lift the prints from the person's doorknob.
Step 9: Construct a negative impression using photoresist on copper.
Step 10: Construct a positive using gelatin or silicone.
Step 11: Wait for a murder to occur. Use social engineering techniques to find out the model of handgun used.
Step 12: Purchase a similar model of handgun and file off the serial numbers.
Step 13: Use the gelatin fingertips to leave conspicuous fingerprints on the weapon, fire it several times, then leave it in the thief's car.
Step 14: Place an anonymous tip call from a pay phone near the house (use gloves), then leave the city for a few days.
Step 15: Wait for the police to arrest the thief.
Step 16: Break into the person's house that night and take your stolen laptop back.
Now that is how it's done.
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