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Collar-Bomber Tracked By Gmail Accesses
RockDoctor writes "Reports indicate that a suspect has been arrested in the Australian 'collar bomb' hostage/extortion case. The allegation is that the suspect had set up a Gmail account, through which he (allegedly) planned to communicate with the extortion victims and arrange delivery of the payment. Unfortunately for him, records were kept showing the location and time the account was set up, and also for a number of accesses. This information, combined with 'CCTV footage and motor vehicle records,' allowed the police to put an identity to the suspect, and arrange for his arrest. So, if you're planning an extortion scheme, don't drive your car to the internet cafe, don't set up the account from an airport, wear anonymous clothes (like Jason Bourne does?) and do all your accesses through hacked shell accounts somewhere in Outer Mongolia. But, this being Slashdot, everyone knew that already."
Don't do anything illegal.
He probably would have gotten away with it if he didn't use gmail.
did you forget to take your meds?
Finding a shell account in outer Mongolia is more work than it is worth. What are you going to get from an extortion gig? A couple mil? You couldn't drag me to outer Mongolia for less than 10. Well. Unless the alternative was inner Australia. :P
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
The idiot also bought a USB memory stick he used in the 'collar bomb' (Given the description though, it's basically a box and chain) from a local Officeworks using his Mastercard. Real genius there. Although it's important to note that law enforcement around the world subpoena email providers everyday so I wouldn't exactly call this news.
You mean a business suit and a Guy Fawkes mask?
But, this being Slashdot, everyone knew that already
Anyone with a gmail account should know it. You go to a few Google places while signed in it tells you your location. You don't need to be a geek or what passes for one on Slashdot. You only need to be awake.
And if you did, you'd get a nice treat! The victim has some DAMN first-class sweater meat!!!
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
So he wasn't very technically savvy, and let's make fun of him for that. But Jesus F'innng Christ!!! He stuck a fake bomb collar around the neck of an eighteen year old girl to extort her parents. It took cops TEN HOURS to get that device off of her. Can you freaking imagine that ordeal? I would have shit my pants a few times already in that time span.
And not to be disrespectful or anything, but that girl is really pretty!
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
There was a similar case in Erie PA back in 2007 I believe using a collar bomb. The poor guy had to rob a bank and reach a final destination before the timer ran out. Sadly the police held him at gun point and the timer went out before the bomb squad came.
I guess one could say that he got collared!:)
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Reading through the police report pdf the guy appears to be a complete moron. Using his own credit card, car, public internet spots surrounded by CCTV, wearing/keeping the same clothes. Not real smart if you ask me. "A lawyer for Mr Peters said his client would fight the charges against him." - Why bother even trying given the evidence? Save your money or whats left of it for buying your way out of inevitable ass-rapage in jail.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
What an idiot. Where do these guys learn their techniques.
if you are smart enough to run a successful extortion plot, you are also smart enough to make money honestly and jeopardy-free, and realize that's the better choice
i know, i know: there is always the common refrain that you don't hear about the smart criminals. that their invisibility is proof of their success. their invisibility could also be taken as proof of their nonexistence
not that smart criminals don't exist. i am certain there's some dude in french polynesia sunning himself right now with his ill-gotten gains from a perfect caper. but i believe this is the rarity. most people have hollywood-addled imaginations, and overestimate the number of the mysterious perfect criminal in this world
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I can understand why it took 10 hours to take the collar off that gal. Made a lot of sense to me.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
they had tv footage and everything
for awhile he was like "i'm going to blow up, i'm going to blow up". then towards then end he basically just gave up and accepted what was coming. pretty sad. the bomb squad was still being assembled: boom, right on the side of the road, surrounded by cops. i guess many thought it was a fake until then
thank god for hollywood, which had to turn it into a comedy >/sarcasm<
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/08/30-minutes-or-less-collar-bom/
as a matter of timing, you wonder if the movie inspired this australian idiot. reading about the plot in the newspaper (i don't think movie came out yet when this idiotic plot went down)
you know you are a genuine idiot, when a comedy about feeble idiots trying to cook up a feeble criminal plot, inspires you to actually try that real life
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
All these Hollywood films give the impression that a clever individual can, with anonymity, challenge the state, rob a bank, uncover corruption at the highest levels and so on. In practice it is already impossible to do any of those things. Yes, you can get your hands on explosives, guns, private data, information etc. and sure, you can send emails, make phone calls from a stolen mobile phone and so on, but there are so many logs these days that if the authorities want to track down who did it they can.
You cannot walk through London without being recorded on hundreds of CCTV systems. All mobile phone calls are logged by number and location. No vehicle on the UK motorway system goes unrecorded. Twitter, Google and Facebook all cooperate with the authorities and hold your data long after you believe that you have deleted it.
One person in the UK has just been given a 4 year jail sentence for encouraging rioting via his twitter account. Come the revolution the revolutionaries will be outsmarted and in jail.
Technology has tipped the balance heavily in favour of authority and you cannot do much about it, except wave banners around and chant, and to be honest that is just entertainment for the masses, column inches for the tabloids and will change nothing.
This is just despicable. It's just viral marketing for the movie "30 Minutes or Less". You've all been trolled.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I must give the Australian Police kudos for how they handled this from start to now. Contrast that to the collar bombing that happened in the US. I saw that video and that is something I wish I could unsee. After the collar bomb went off there was a policeman running up the decapitated man with a gun drawn. Yeah right! The guy was dead right there and the cop still had a gun on him. Everything done by policy and procedure. I bet the same thing would've been done to that girl if she had been in the US.
And no this is NOT some "foreigner" bashing America. I am an American bashing our country's lack of brave compassion in our society. We Americans actually punish and marginalize people who go out on a limb to dispense mercy and compassion instead of dishing out the authoritarian policies.
If the actions of the Australian police are a mark of a civilized people then Australia has done itself proud and America has fallen short.
And don't use Google, who fed the IP information to the police.* That seems to be the key here; without an ability to link the GMail account to an IP address in the first place, they never would have found a physical location at which to look for a specific person or a car.
* GMail headers, last I checked, do not contain this information. Some webmail providers add an X-Originating-IP header, e.g. Hotmail, but Google doesn't.
Liberty in your lifetime
A collar bomb? I think the perp played a little too much Fallout 3.
...that is all.
Duct tape at Home Depot, Shovel at Sears, pay cash.
But what do you need a shovel for?
I can think of several alternatives:
- Drop of body in a location where there are bears and wolves.
- Open a manhole cover, drop down the body into the sewer system.
- Drop body from a bridge or into the sea. (a naked body showing up at the beach is not always conclusive to be a murder victim - especially during the summer.)
- Leave body in the desert.
- Locate a cement factory, throw body into the kiln. (this will definitely take care of all traces of a body)
- Build a special trailer which you mount the body under, drive on remote highway during dark hours lowering the trailer to slowly grind off the body against the highway. Traces of the body over several tens of miles. Do this right before a rain and the traces will get washed away. Burn the trailer afterward.
- Place body in derelict building, burn building.
- Use a considerable amount of explosives, blow the body into pieces.
- Butcher the body into unrecognizable pieces, leave pieces at local butcher. (don't eat sausage from that butcher for a while)
And always make sure that the body is completely naked - no clothes will make identification harder. DNA will still require something to match the body to, and to match a specific body to the large number of missing persons can be tough.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
so you idea is to do your extortion in China, one's of the most monitored place's in the world in regard's to the internet, saying that it is China, top plan
aren't we all kind of missing the point here by not leveling seething, mindless criticism at the Fallout video game series for inspiring this guy?
All these rational reactions are getting a bit worrying.
buy shovel's, etc. at local goodwill stores, garage sales, etc. A new tool will possibly have them looking through surveillance cameras at stores. Used items are not only harder to track down, but will lead investigators on a wild goose chase if they are able to get any identifying information from them.
Outer Mongolia is no haven for criminals - that country's government is on pretty good terms w/ the West, and would either prosecute such criminals, or extradite them, as applicable. Try such things either in Inner Mongolia (which is a part of China, assuming that you have internet access there) or in countries, like Iran, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, et al
RockDoctor,
Question marks mark questions. This is not a question. It's a statement. /. should have a requirement that you must have a better grasp of the English language than a fifth grader to post headlines. Or maybe hire an editor.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!