laptop theft at Berkeley

[V6-BoI]

Heh I saw this video at work the other day and thought it was pretty funny. The theif is gonna get owned hard!

http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/742.html

[soupey]

haha ouch!, lesson learned, if ur gona steal, dont steal from smart people lol

[l8braker]

after all the big talk, I wonder if he got his laptop back?:dunno:

[sputnik]

Thats pretty old.

However there are some serious flaws in his story that question whether or not he is telling the truth and that he is mostly using scare tactics to get his laptop back. He probably had a bunch of gay porn on it and didnt want to be outed.

While it is possible to see a computer connected to an 802.11 AP it isnt that easy to determine the position of the laptop inside of a 2km radius. It is unlikely they would be able to find the person unless the person was staying seated for several hours and you had a team searching for him.

If he was doing consulting for the FBI and NIH why would he be storing files locally on the computer or at the very least without heavy encryption. Only a moron would store "trade secrets" on a laptop hard drive. Not to mention, by specifically saying what was on the laptop you are opening another security issue, because if the data did in fact exist he wouldnt publically say it for fear that the data would get copied and sold.

Why would the teacher publically announce exactly how they were tracking the user before he got his laptop back? Thats like the police announcing to the media the methods they were using to track a serial killer.

I call BS on the profs part... or just REALLY STUPID recovery tactics.

[Kirbs17]

Probably scared the shit out of the kid who stole the laptop

[Weapon_R]

That prof is a douchebag. If he knew so much about its whereabouts, he wouldn't waste time trying to play the scare game on his students.

[Pihsiak]

If this is the vid i;m thinking about where the prof said that the FBI would be on his ass if the theif did not return the laptop....

all a bluff, he never got it back. Apparently the theif knew more about computers than he did.

[V6-BoI]

Originally posted by sputnik

If he was doing consulting for the FBI and NIH why would he be storing files locally on the computer or at the very least without heavy encryption. Only a moron would store "trade secrets" on a laptop hard drive. Not to mention, by specifically saying what was on the laptop you are opening another security issue, because if the data did in fact exist he wouldnt publically say it for fear that the data would get copied and sold.


Hmm.. that's a good point, I didn't think of that. I'm sure it's mostly to scare the student that jacked his laptop. I mean the student is probably pretty freaked out about getting caught already for stealing the lap top. Ontop of that, saying stuff about getting the federal marshals involved probably just made the thief that much closer to shitting their pants.

[soupey]

sooo is there really a way to trace where a certain mac address physically is?...

[Xtrema]

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000817041260/

This story is 6+ months old. He bluff and the world called it.

[Gripenfelter]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/03/28/financial/f151143S80.DTL

[GoChris]

heh was a nice effort.