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Best Way To Get Back a Stolen Computer?
Posted by
kdawson
on Fri Jul 04, 2008 09:26 AM
from the aiding-lawn-forcement dept.
from the aiding-lawn-forcement dept.
davidphogan74 writes "I have some stolen computers checking in with a server we have (software pre-loaded), and I have full access to the systems. What's the best way to deal with this situation? The local police (to the theft) have been contacted several times and seem to be clueless. I personally have no financial interest in these computers, I just don't like atom-thieves. What's the best way to handle knowing the IPs, email addresses, MySpace sites, the Google login, etc. when working with law enforcement? The officer I spoke with (who genuinely seemed to care) didn't know an IP address from a mailing address, so I called others. Nobody cared. Anyone have any ideas?"
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You need to go beyond the law. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You need to go beyond the law. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:You need to go beyond the law. (Score:5, Funny)
No, but I thought he'd be taller.
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You have remote root? A few ideas :-) (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:You have remote root? A few ideas :-) (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:You need to go beyond the law. (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry to piggyback on you Squiddy. Perhaps some kind soul will mod this relevant comment up.
SO1-06113169-C
If anyone at Sony can match a NIC signature to this please post. Sooner or later the idiots are going to plug it in.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7489064.stm [bbc.co.uk]
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Change the background pic (Score:5, Funny)
You need to use the police to get the ISP's info (Score:5, Informative)
The ISP can tell you who is at an IP address, and from that, you can find your computers.
Re:You need to use the police to get the ISP's inf (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:You need to use the police to get the ISP's inf (Score:5, Informative)
confidential data such as that can only be obtained with a court order ... unless you're sneaky and can somehow convince tech support or a CSR to give you the information.
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Re:You need to use the police to get the ISP's inf (Score:5, Funny)
So, pretend to call as the RIAA.
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Cops get a warrant. (Score:5, Informative)
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Set it to download kiddie porn... (Score:5, Funny)
If the police will not help you then set it to up/download dubious content. They will be round like a shot. You might get nicked visiting a FBI kiddie-porn honey trap during your research for this though...
Maybe try the RIAA. Claim that it has downloaded an Amy Winehouse track or something like that.
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Harold and Kumar go to Guantanamo (Score:5, Funny)
Or send a threatening note to the white house along with pictures of swarthy people in turbans. Fast track them to Guantanamo.
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Re:You need to use the police to get the ISP's inf (Score:5, Funny)
If you have monitoring software on the computer, just wait until they do some sort of financial transaction using the company machine.
Then just use the info to order a few dozen more PC's at their expense, and send them an email saying you won't tell if they won't.
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Re:You need to use the police to get the ISP's inf (Score:5, Informative)
What you need to do here is to contact a specialist computer crimes department. This will not be a new situation to them and they will recognize the fact that there is a very high probability of an arrest and recovery of the stolen goods.
The first thing to do would be to find out if the computers were officially reported stolen. If so you need to report the development to the police force where the theft was reported. Otherwise make out a report.
Once a report is made it counts on their local statistics and the police have to take it seriously - we are talking about several thousand dollars here.
There may not be a computer crimes dept on your local force but they should certainly have access to those resources. Find out which force is responsible for investigating kiddie porn - those guys would usually pretty much prefer to be doing anything else for a change, after a short while its like shooting fish in a barrel.
You can certainly help by collecting as much information as possible. For example, log the IP addresses that the machines are using. Then use reverse DNS lookup to find the ISP.
If you still can't get anywhere, contact me at hallam@dotfuturemanifesto.com and I can pass the issue on to folk I know. They may not be able to help you direct but they will know someone who can.
The reason that so much time and effort is poured into investigating kiddie porn rather than bank fraud is not simply the nature of the crime. Its the fact that they have a defined process that delivers highly predictable results. If we could design a process for delivering collars in phishing fraud we would have no difficulty making it a higher police priority.
It seems to me that this is an area where we can easily set up a predictable recovery process that delivers collars.
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Re:You need to use the police to get the ISP's inf (Score:5, Insightful)
Then befriend the thief over a couple weeks and get all the personal info you can (phone #, maybe even address, etc..)
Then just call the cops with a physical address and tell them the person committed grand theft [wikipedia.org] of company property, and that you suspect they have the stolen property at their residence.
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Re:You need to use the police to get the ISP's inf (Score:5, Interesting)
The police are really clueless when it comnes to this as well as cyber crime.
A few years ago a had a debit card number stolen from a site where I purchased a CD. All of a sudden we started seeing odd charges (for body piercing jewelery). Within 24 hours, I had contacted the places where the purchases were made and had the person's name, home address, and home phone number. I did nothing illegal since he had put my name on the orders as the person paying the bill. I managed to get most of the money refunded to my account in a day but the police did NOTHING.
The bank still insisted that I fill out a theft report - which the cops did even they didn't quite understand why. I gave them the information when I filled out the report and they were kinda stumped what to actually do about it.
So this seems to be the norm (not having cops understand what to do with technology).
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Re:You need to use the police to get the ISP's inf (Score:5, Interesting)
Another true story: I had a neighbor of my sister that was getting beaten pretty bad,she had a restraining order,but when she would call the cops they would take an average of FOUR HOURS to get there. So I told her to tell the cops when she dialed 911 that she believed he had drugs on him. The cops were there in under THREE MINUTES and then proceeded to get VERY nasty with the guy when they tore his truck apart and didn't find any dope. So I guess the moral of the story is unless it is a crime they want to deal with,you can pretty much forget it. Hey,that might work for you! Tell the cops you have remote access to the box and the suspect was talking about drugs! I bet they go out of their way to get him for you! Have fun! And as always this is my 02c,YMMV
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Re:You need to use the police to get the ISP's inf (Score:5, Interesting)
Police have two criteria in setting their priorities. The first and least important is the priority placed on the crime itself. Theft of goods worth $1000 or more ranks pretty highly, second only to violent crime.
The second criteria is the probability of an arrest. Here speeding and parking tickets rate at the top of the list.
Computer crime is only low on the list because the probability of an arrest is very low. But these circumstances make an arrest very likely and that changes the priority.
Why so many AC's wanting to diss this particular advice? They couldn't be like computer thieves upset about the risk to their careers?
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Re:You need to use the police to get the ISP's inf (Score:5, Insightful)
The ISP can tell you who is at an IP address
Uhh, no the ISP can not tell OP who is at an IP address and I would hope that you don't really expect that would really happen under any circumstances. An ISP isn't going to turn over personally identifying information with out a judges (or at least a sworn Law Enforcement Officers's) signature.
To answer the question: You found a guy who cares, you just need to get him to understand the evidence you have and how to follow the trail the point that he's willing to take action. Giving up in talking to him won't solve your problem. Calling him clueless won't either.
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Re:You need to use the police to get the ISP's inf (Score:5, Informative)
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Treat it as an Open Source problem (Score:5, Funny)
Become a cop and solve it yourself.
Re:Treat it as an Open Source problem (Score:5, Insightful)
That's both +5 funny and +5 insightful. If only more people would understand how clueless their "if you don't like it the source code is right there" attitude can be.
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Re:Treat it as an Open Source problem (Score:5, Funny)
If it's an open source problem, it's very likely that it's already been fixed in CVS. Just make sure you have the latest GCC (GNU Crimefighting Compiler) and when you do run your autoconfig, make, make install, be sure to run it in a chroot jail.
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Seems to be common these days (Score:5, Interesting)
See what this guy did with his irrigation controller:
http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/04/1228208 [slashdot.org]
Go to a lawyer (Score:5, Insightful)
Speak with a lawyer that has knowledge and interest in this situation. The fact that a successful prosecution may bring a lot of publicity to the guy may be enough to help him work for free, or the company that is losing the computers may post his retainer.
What is your relation to all of this? As with any civil case, the police are not going to be a driving force to pursue the theft; your company or the people that lost it should be making sure things get done.
I wouldn't expect police to know anything about IP, MAC addresses, login tracing, etc., but a lawyer would. Then, what a lawyer can do is go to a judge saying, "We have solid evidence that person at IP x.x.x.x which is Verizon ISP registered to address ___ main street., also cross confirming with name at myspace profile _____, is using stolen property."
A warrant will then be issued, and the police can go to the house and retrieve the laptop, and interview the guy, who will doubtlessly say "I bought it from _____ on the street, I thought it was legit." You will surely get your computer back, and if you find a motherlode of computers, he will surely go to jail.
Re:Go to a lawyer (Score:5, Informative)
As with any civil case, the police are not going to be a driving force to pursue a theft
FYI Theft is criminal, not civil, how serious depends on the dollar amount. Most thefts under $1000 are misdemeanors, over that is felony theft and these crimes are certainly under the pervue of your local and state police (unless its interstate, in which cases the FBI has jurisdiction).
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The same we you resolve all problems on a computer (Score:5, Funny)
First you go get a gun, then you run around shooting complete strangers (don't worry - they'll respawn eventually), and make your way toward any glowing switches you happen to find. For no apparent reason, this will advance you toward your goal of getting your computer back.
OH! Don't forget to find a good spot to spawn camp to get your frag numbers up! I hear the nursery ward at the hospital tends to be a good camping spot...
Use a phone analogy? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is Slashdot. (Score:5, Funny)
Phone analogy? This is Slashdot. It's car analogy or GTFO.
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Find out where the gear is physically (Score:5, Insightful)
My advice is to find out where the gear is physically, then call the sympathetic cop back.
If you cannot find that out, you cannot expect them to. I would take the IP address and contact the ISP that serves it. If they won't help you, get the cop to do it.
An obvious question is, do these computers have built in cameras that can be turned on remotely ? That might produce useful info.
You might also be able to read the thieves' email. If you do that long enough, I bet you will get their names and addresses.
Escalate the Issue to the FBI (Score:5, Insightful)
You may want to escalate the matter to a different law enforcement agency, such as the FBI. They should be more responsive to this sort of thing, especially if you describe it as data theft, rather than property theft, as surely your company's computers that were stolen were loaded with company data.
If you live in a small county with elected/appointed law enforcement agents, perhaps you should raise this issue the next time they're up for re-election. If you live in a larger city, perhaps you should contact your city councilor about the issue and request that your city's police force be modernized for the 21st century.
You should avoid doing anything yourself, as you can land yourself in legal trouble. If you insist on doing something yourself, get legal advice first to ensure you aren't going to cause more trouble for yourself in the process.
Re:Escalate the Issue to the FBI (Score:5, Informative)
Many ppl mistakenly assume the FBI deals with computer fraud, electronic credit card theft, etc. It is actually under the Secret Service who have VERY good people working for them. //have had to call them
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Log information, find out who they are. (Score:5, Informative)
Write down the IP address, find the ISP and call them and ask them to log that you called with the date and time, and the IP address. I wouldn't expect you to tell you who it is, but have them log the user at that time so you can reference it later.
xkcd has the answer (Score:5, Funny)
Something similiar to: http://www.xkcd.com/440/ [xkcd.com]
find the right people to talk with (Score:5, Insightful)
talk to the police chief in the town, talk with the local sheriff. If you can't get satisfaction, talk with the local newspaper. Also try the county judge, they may give you some insight on how to motivate the law on that area.
Be sure to keep meticulous records on IP addresses, dates, times, etc. Find out what ISP they are using and contact them. They will very likely tell you they cannot give YOU information, but they probably will give this information to the police/sheriff. Make sure that happens before their records are rotated and wiped. It may be necessary for them to fax the ISP a request or get it in writing, again make sure this process moves forward, keep tabs on progress and that it doesn't be come a "we didn't have time to bother".
There are other creative ideas you could employ. Put a script on the laptop that emails the county judge once an hour saying "hello from stolen laptop located in your district. Just a reminder for you that your law enforcement has yet to recover this identified stolen property after having been notified of its location." Be sure it CCs the local sheriff/police chief. If you know the mayor or governor's email address, that makes a good CC also.
If they ask you to stop the emails, refuse. Sorry that laptop's been stolen. Maybe you should go get it for me and I'll turn off the script?
PowerSolution (Score:5, Funny)
Call the cops back, tell them not to worry about following up the theft, as you just went around and shot the thief.
See how fast they scuttle ;)
Obvious (Score:5, Funny)
I actually do work for a PD. (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, if they're not remotely tech savvy and/or simply afraid of technology, it may take some prodding. Most state police agencies have teams specifically tasked with this sort of thing, so it may be that you have to contact your state's police for help.
When you bring any documentation, also make sure you have estimated costs of all the hardware. That will sometimes help get people's attention, being able to say it's X number of dollars. Not saying it's right, but much of the time you run into departments who won't pay much attention to "petty" thefts, but will take notice of $2000 or more. There have been a number of
Setup a fake myspace page..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Setup a fake myspace page with pictures of a cute girl. Friend the dumbass thief, flirt awhile, and then get them to come out on a "date". When you finally meet up with them, bring a few of your own friends with any weapon you deem necessary. Once you meet them and they figure out what is going on, tell them how you found them and let them know if you don't get your property back you will do damage with whatever weapon you chose to bring.
In my case the guy who stole my laptop passed out when he was confronted (very pathetic) and we had to wait for him to wake up. When he woke back up he was still so confused and frightened by how we tracked him down that he gave me twice what the laptop was worth just so we wouldn't call the cops on him because it would ruin his chances at becoming a doctor (apparently he was a med student).
Some people don't like vigilante justice but from what I've seen in the past from my own experience and the experience of my friends and acquaintances, the cops aren't very good at recovering stolen property and I'm not rolling in enough money to be robbed and just shrug it off.
Posted anonymous for the obvious reasons.
Call the DA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Call your district attorney's office. They love this kind of stuff, honestly - and they'll be happy to track down thieves with the assistance of law enforcement.
If the computers have been taken across state lines - you may be able to contact the FBI as well.
If they can get on the front page with a table full of stolen gear - they'll be really happy.
easy... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Across State lines? (Score:5, Funny)
Or make the computers send a death threat to each member of the congress and executive office (including the candidates) then the FBI moves in, and at the impounded auction you can buy it back for pennies on the dollar.
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Re:Across State lines? (Score:5, Funny)
Or make the computers send a death threat to each member of the congress and executive office (including the candidates)...
I've got to admit that this appeals to me. Just don't sign it "Osama" or mention WMDs... It seems there are some things they're just not interested in finding. [g]
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Re:Across State lines? (Score:5, Informative)
The FBI won't intervene for less than $5000 worth of stolen goods, generally.
Work for the NSA and get a computer with top secret (but not especially sensitive) data on it. When that gets stolen, you'll have a black ops team using the thieves' home as a training facility for an evening. That happened to my friend, once. (He had an NSA-style briefcase with builtin microphone, cell phone, radio transmitter, and GPS unit that was stolen. He himself did not steal such an item.)
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Re:Obvious Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
You then run the risk of alerting the thieves that the systems are remotely accessible. This might prompt them to re-format and re-install which loses you the ability of remote access.
If it was me, I'd be installing keystroke loggers and seeing what kinds of information I can capture. Credit cards, phone numbers, email addresses, etc. can give you the ability to inflict deeper wounds than than the cd tray can cause.
Now, I'm not suggesting that you commit credit card fraud with captured numbers, but you could submit those credit card numbers to a newsgroup on the net read by people that would be more than happy to commit the fraud for you.
Heh, steal a computer and destroy your credit rating. All of their friends in the address book get spammed to death, their email accounts are suspended for spam. Capture a phone number, submit it to companies that will try to sell them crap during dinner. You get the idea.
Why annoy, when you can inflict real and lasting damage.
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Re:Obvious Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
These are thieves. They're likely already using stolen credit card/identities. Taking that data and posting it publicly would probably just harm an innocent person.
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Re:Obvious Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to live in a world where all thieves are super-thieves and there's a distinct absence of random stupid idiot thieves... must be nice!
They walked off with a computer. That doesn't automatically make them geniuses. If they were, the first thing to do would have been to wipe the disk and start over. There are TONS of phone-home apps on the market, any semi-professional thief would know this.
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Re:If you don't care about getting them back... (Score:5, Informative)
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