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."

Comments

Best advice not to get caught

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't do anything illegal.

Re:Best advice not to get caught

[dohzer]

Tell that to the people who get wrongly jailed.

Re:Best advice not to get caught

[Z00L00K]

Always work through people's unsecured access points.

A proxy node that has wireless access through an unsecured AP in one part of the world allows you to access it from another part of the world, and having a proxy set up inside a major company network can be a benefit too. And use TOR too just to make things even trickier.

Then access the entry AP from a long distance away using a Cantenna.

Of course - all data traffic needs to be encrypted except for the last hop. Add random time delays in the proxies to mess with data correlation too. Mail enters proxy, waits for a few minutes up to an hour and then bounce to the next proxy to finally arrive at destination. Patience is a virtue.

Re:Best advice not to get caught

[sorak]

Don't do anything illegal.

I'm sorry. That response is only appropriate in cases in which someone is falsely accused. Blaming the victim when it's actually his fault is a radical new twist on that argument.

Re:PITA

[Anonymous Coward]

Would that be a Bourne Shell or a Bourne Again Shell

Anonymous clothes?

[stevegee58]

You mean a business suit and a Guy Fawkes mask?

Um

[assertation]

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.

What a sick freak!

[darkmeridian]

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!

Re:gmail?

[Arancaytar]

if it weren't for that meddling Google!

fixed

Re:PITA

[cyclomedia]

Bourne WAS wiping fingerprints down etc up until the midpoint of the first film. After the Clive Owen incident he stopped running and started taking the fight to them, after which he WANTS them to know exactly where he is and what he's doing most of the time, to fuck with them, basically.

Retribution

[Mikkeles]

I guess one could say that he got collared!:)

Police report is pretty darn damning

[kaptink]

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.

Re:gmail?

[gtch]

Someone set up a madeleinepulver.com site plastered with advertising, including Google ads of course.

Yet curiously it was a competing ad network which placed the advertisement "Live in the USA!" on top of photos of Madeleine Pulver, not Google. With all the data in gmail about this guy moving to the USA, surely Google should have been placing that ad?

PS. Site is now down, screenshot at http://i54.tinypic.com/2ducdvn.png

Re:Had this happen in Erie PA

[Jon Stone]

The "poor guy" is believed to have been part of the gang that came up with the plan in the first place. He wasn't, however, expecting it to be a real bomb.

Brian Douglas Wells

or, even better

[circletimessquare]

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

Re:or, even better

[Hatta]

Smart criminals exist. We call them politicians and executives.

Re:or, even better

[biodata]

Being in a position not to get caught and punished for their crimes does not make them not criminals.

Re:or, even better

[MacGyver2210]

Given the copyright laws in most of the developed world, I'd say most Slashdotters are smart criminals...

Re:Had this happen in Erie PA

[DigiTechGuy]

The guy was actually a conspirator in the plan, not an innocent bystander.

Wiki Brian Douglas Wells

Cleveland Article

It's worse than you think

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Kudos to the Aussie Police

[zildgulf]

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 GMail

[J'raxis]

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.

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.

Re:Had this happen in Erie PA

[anagama]

I haven't done extensive reading on this, in fact, this is the first time I've heard of the incident amazingly enough. But I would point out that one of the people charged with masterminding the plan is the one who said the "poor guy" was an accomplice. Just saying the source is rather suspect and it is possible that "poor guy" really was.

How to get rid of a body.

[Z00L00K]

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.