Why you don't steal from a hacker.

http://infosec20.blogspot.com/2011/08/why-you-dont-steal-from-hacker.html

by gregcmartin • 15 years ago

272 151 15 years ago

infosec20.blogspot.com

My flat was raided and ransacked during the London riots, but thanks to tracking software I fed intel to the London Metro police until he was apprehended and my laptop returned.

there• 15 years ago

using a laptop recovery service to do exactly what it was intended to do. sweet hack, bro!

Ronkdar• 15 years ago

You're missing the point. To paraphrase: "As a hacker, I had the good sense to make sure I had tracking software installed. I take security seriously."

vasco• 15 years ago

My mom is a hacker too. She hacked her own gmail account the other day by recovering her password, she even had to remember the name of her first pet!

nikcub• 15 years ago

the word 'hacker' has been diluted to a new low

first to 'somebody who can write a web app', to now 'somebody who can install software'

icebraining8• 15 years ago

The thief did more "hacking" by using the OSX install CD than him.

swatthatfly• 15 years ago

From his LinkedIn profile: "Greg Martin is a recognized Information Security professional with over 12 years experience and considered an industry expert in Network Security and SIEM technology." Sounds like the word hacker could very well apply. I think he used it in relationship to his profession, not to his installation skills.

NathanKP2• 15 years ago

I've read some really great stories in which real hackers used SSH to log in to their stolen computers, install key loggers, and custom tools. This obviously isn't one of those stories though.

I think it is great that the average person can now do all those things from a web app. It is funny though that they still consider themselves to be hackers because they can use that web app. Another example of misuse of the term hack that I see all the time is when people use someone else's logged in Facebook session and then claim they "hacked their Facebook" because that person left their session logged in. Silly...

kleim• 15 years ago

Is this one of the example you are looking for? http://gizmodo.com/5717309/what-happens-when-you-steal-a-hac... (talk from Def Con '11)

wheels• 15 years ago

Reading comprehension fail. Just because the title asserts that the poster is a hacker doesn't mean that the post justifies why he is one. If I write something about "Why you don't steal from a Texan" I'm going to talk about you digging lead out of your derriere, not about where I was born.

icebraining8• 15 years ago

If the title was "You don't steal from a hacker," you might have a point, but "Why you don't steal from a hacker" implies the reason for that is exposed in the post.

jfoutz• 15 years ago

Yeah, if you dig through his blog, he has some really cool model train stuff.

dsmithn• 15 years ago

In fact, he's updated his post to reflect this kind of comment:

"Updated: to quell the comments, I did not choose the title to imply downloading tracking software is hacking, I am a hacker by profession and have been all my life."

jhonnycano• 15 years ago

Next would be "Somebody who can use a computer"

eli• 15 years ago

Semantics is one of the least interesting things to argue about on the Internet.

pbhjpbhj• 15 years ago

No it isn't! /python

;0)>

Sorry couldn't resist.

libria• 15 years ago

...says a guy who submits non-hacker news to Hacker News. =)

Sargis• 15 years ago

Is this one of those viral marketing campaigns again? Yesterday, there was a popular thread on Reddit about some guy who retrieved his stolen Macbook by using the exact same software that's being mentioned here. And not to mention the several other threads here on HN a few months ago that are suspiciously similar.

Or maybe it's just really useful.

evilswan• 15 years ago

I have prey too - it's awesome.

louhong• 15 years ago

Any suggestions on alternatives? I'm not considering installing it but would like to know my options.

bonzoesc• 15 years ago

It's free and open-source. I doubt they have the budget for a viral marketing campaign.

lancefisher• 15 years ago

They might have the budget: http://preyproject.com/plans

tomaspollak4• 15 years ago

no it's not. and please don't start with this over again.

we (the Prey team) don't have the time or the interest to pay people, thieves or whomever to build and publish these elaborate stories.

I spent almost all afternoon yesterday on Reddit -- where some guy published a similar story -- trying to make it clear that we had nothing to do with it (besides having developed the software).

I'd be happy to answer any questions regarding Prey, but please don't make me go repeating today the same thing all over again.

Kirchart123• 15 years ago

Thanks for your software, i think u guys are latin-americans? ...

tyler_ball2• 15 years ago

Here is a much funnier and more technical account of someone retrieving their stolen computer. In video form!

Skip to 3:15 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAI8S2houW4

mrspeaker• 15 years ago

I've been thinking about that video... the guy says it started connecting to the network over 2 years after it was stolen. It seems unlikely (or at least plausible) that the guy who had it was the guy who stole it... or did I miss a key bit of info that justified it all?

tyler_ball2• 15 years ago

That's true. He did say that he gave up looking for it on Craigslist and eBay after a while, so it may have changed hands after he gave up the search.

pclark• 15 years ago

This is why I have file vault + password screensaver on my MacBook Pro + insurance. I'd sooner have to wait a few days to get a new laptop than rely on: a) the user not instantly formatting the computer, b) prey finding my laptop, c) the police doing something about it.

LogicX4• 15 years ago

... why not do exactly that; but ALSO have a guest account, and prey installed. (Also re: not instantly formatting; put firmware and/or hard drive passwords on to slow them down -- most thieves are not computer experts)

I think you under-estimate the speed and hassle of dealing with insurance.

Also most insurance has a deductible. You're still out typically hundreds of dollars.

I had a macbook pro of one of our employees stolen. We used prey to get it back, with assistance from the police. Yes we have corporate insurance, yes we backup our data; but we were still very pleased to receive our stolen property back.

gst3• 15 years ago

If you have a guest account you can't encrypt your whole harddisk. And if my laptop gets stolen I don't care about the money but about my data falling into the wrong hands.

icebraining8• 15 years ago

>Luckily the thief was a smart little bugger and he was able to bypass the password by using an OSX install CD to create a new admin account.

So why did he rely on luck instead of SSHing to the laptop and unlocking the machine?

>I cranked up the frequency of reports to one in every five minutes to try to get a screen capture of him using gmail or facebook so I could snag a name or login credentials.

Hmm, start a keylogger (and a sniffer) in the background and then scp the logs a couple hours later?

notaddicted• 15 years ago

Consumer routers will typically have port 22 firewalled for incoming trafic.

rograndom• 15 years ago

Run SSH on a non-standard port. Or you can have your laptop set to open a reverse ssh tunnel to another trusted machine on some event, like a file changed on your website, etc.

icebraining8• 15 years ago

Ok, I'll rewrite: Why wouldn't he use his reverse SSH connection* to do that stuff?

* Reverse SSH: if wget http://myserver.com/sshreverse; then ssh -R 2900:localhost:22 User@myserver.com; fi

Stick this in a file, chmod +x, then add an entry in cron to run it every hour or so. After that, you just need to create a file in your web server called "sshreverse" and you'll have an SSH tunnel to your laptop.

blhack2• 15 years ago

>So why did he rely on luck instead of SSHing to the laptop and unlocking the machine?

I don't know of a single person who directly connects their laptop to the internet. This would have been sitting behind a NAT device which, unless port 22 was explicitly forwarded to the IP address that his laptop happened to get via DHCP, would have stopped him from SSHing in :)

icebraining8• 15 years ago

That's why I have a two line shell script that creates an SSH tunnel to my server if I put a file called 'reversessh' on my webserver.

I mean, basically doing what Prey does, but without relying on a third-party service and having much more control over the machine.

dkokelley• 15 years ago

I've been wondering about these services. Not having more information about the inner-workings of a monitoring/recovery service, I'm concerned about the company's ability to spy on me the same way I could spy on anyone who uses my stolen laptop. What prevents this from happening?

mattvot• 15 years ago

Prey is open source so, if you knew how to, you could add some monitoring capabilities to Prey to make sure it isn't doing anything it shouldn't.

NathanKP2• 15 years ago

I suppose if you are worried about it you can use Wireshark or some other similar network traffic inspection tool to watch your traffic for suspicious communications you didn't authorize.

dwrowe• 15 years ago

"Hacking" is now referred to, someone posting on anothers facebook, since they were still logged in. /facepalm

saturn7• 15 years ago

How the world has changed, Hackers use macs?

asarazan• 15 years ago

Yes.

dasil0034• 15 years ago

Wow, you are out of touch.

breck2• 15 years ago

Quick look at the source code (https://github.com/tomas/prey) seems to show that if you wipe the HD you're SOL. I'm still waiting for Apple to release Find My Mac (similar to Find My IPhone), which will withstand a hard drive reformat.

Aqua_Geek• 15 years ago

Not sure if it survives a HD reformat, but: http://9to5mac.com/2011/08/03/apples-icloud-find-my-mac-serv...

breck2• 15 years ago

Thanks! Finally a reason to upgrade to Lion.

EGreg2• 15 years ago

Why didn't a real hacker have a keylogger installed on his machine instead of just the webcam thing? You could have gotten the guys' password to his facebook

chc• 15 years ago

In my experience, hackers don't normally keylog themselves. That's the kind of thing they'd rather avoid — it could be especially disastrous if your computer were stolen like this.

EGreg2• 15 years ago

Obviously I mean a remotely activated keylogger - the computer goes online and checks a website to see if it should start the keylogging

drdaeman• 15 years ago

Encrypt the logs with your public key. Do not keep the private key anywhere near the machines, containing the encrypted logs. Move logs to a remote secure storage (co-located or home-hosted) as soon as Internet connection's available. Assure reasonable amount of electronic and physical security of the storage servers.

Problem solved!

gregcmartin3• 15 years ago

Sorry I wasn't implying that the software I used made me a hacker, that is simply just my profession... I use the term very widely to be someone who codes, pentests, reverses malware or jailbreaks iphones...

dasil0034• 15 years ago

Yes, I'm saddened by all the responses here making the basic logical fallacy of affirming the consequent.

It seemed perfectly clear to me that you meant that a hacker is going to have some means of finding his stolen laptop rather than that using Prey makes you some kind of hacker.

And to the criticism that you are running a product, that's ridiculous as well. Do we all solder our own motherboards? Devout Not-Invented-Hereism isn't a prerequisite for being a hacker, and in fact it probably makes you much less effective of one.

icebraining8• 15 years ago

>And to the criticism that you are running a product, that's ridiculous as well.

Personally, it's not so much using a product, but 1) giving access to a third-party (the Prey server admins) to his laptop and 2) being limited instead of having complete control.

Prey just seems a poor solution if you know what you're doing. For non-computer geeks is excellent, though.

Legion2• 15 years ago

It's sad that many of the people who say the word "hacker" means all these positive and inclusive things are often the same people who lambast someone for actually using the word that way to refer to themselves.

Make up your minds. Is it the inclusive, "explorers of technology" meaning where it's more about curiosity and open-mindedness than skill level, or is it your little l337 boys club badge of honor?

rajpaul• 15 years ago

"took a report and dusted for prints, performed typical forensics"

I'm impressed that the police dust for prints in England. I've never heard of someone getting that kind of thoroughness for a domestic burglary where I live.

jff3• 15 years ago

When my house was burgled, the cops sent out 3 cars, did a thorough inspection, took inventory of what had been stolen, and dusted for prints in places we indicated were likely to have been touched (the windowframe where they came in, some doorknobs, and the box fan they had moved). This was in Rochester's 19th Ward (New York), possibly the most dangerous and high-crime part of town.

As far as I know, they never caught anybody, but at least they tried. I'm pretty sure it was my drug-dealing neighbors two houses down... especially since the guy three houses down claims the security cameras on his porch showed them taking stuff from our house to theirs. Oh well.

eneveu• 15 years ago

Same in Paris when my brother's apartment was burgled a few months ago... 2 members of the French Scientific Police took pictures / fingerprints. I didn't think they'd go that far, having read countless stories on how this is usually handled in the US.

fullmoon• 15 years ago

Can confirm of similarly good service in Vienna, Austria;

Thorough investigation, dusted for prints, and even took sample of nondescript, possibly bodily fluid (turned out to be non-organic).

Very professional; Though wouldn't get burglarised again.

giberson• 15 years ago

Glad the person got their Mac back, but why does this story and ones like it always end at the recovery of the property? Could we get an update on the punishment of the criminal? I'd like to know what kind of repercussions the criminals suffer--do they get prosecuted? I'm just curious if these software tracking systems have been used in court as evidence to convict any of these criminals.

Apocryphon• 15 years ago

I'm not sure if it's that easy for the victim to find that information. My family was robbed several years ago and while the police eventually reported that they caught the perps, that was all of the detail they left. Similarly, my girlfriend had credit cards stolen once and neither the police nor the credit card company gave any information except that they had found the people who stole the card. Perhaps this discretion is to prevent people from attempting vigilante followup actions?

danso• 15 years ago

I'm almost certain that (in the States at least) that information would be public record. After all, the person has to be arraigned and go to trial. Police reports are almost always public information, even reports that don't involve you personally. You just have to go to the station sometimes.

megablast• 15 years ago

The police aren't going to report to you every step of the way, (why would they?), but that does not mean you can't find that info out. You could even talk to the police officers involved, they would be happy to tell you, if they know.

ChuckMcM• 15 years ago

I was wondering that too. I was thinking that perhaps this guy had gone and screwed around with his social network given the facebook screen cap at the end. Of course if someone steals your laptop, and using software you've installed you keylog all their secrets and you use their credit card to buy themselves a hundred pizzas each from 10 stores around town, that would be a bit much perhaps.

I know from experience (not me of course, but that of some kids who stole some stuff from a neighbor) that juveniles who are caught and convicted of petty theft basically get a slap on the wrist, a stern warning about what will happen if they do it again, and sent home.

cbr• 15 years ago

the police probably haven't done anything yet

jerrya• 15 years ago

  The story you have just heard is true. The names were changed to
  protect the innocent.
  
  On August 12th, trial was held in Department 98, Superior Court of the
  State of __London, in and for the County of __London. In a moment the 
  results of that trial.
  
  Shillip Herbert Keaver was tried and convicted of robbery in the first
  degree - five counts - and received sentence as prescribed by
  law. Robbery in the First Degree is punishable by imprisonment for a
  period of not less than five years in the __London penitentiary. Because
  of the viciousness of the suspect, it was decided that the terms would
  run consecutively.

  You have just heard "DragNet," a series of authentic cases
  from official files. Technical advice comes from the
  office of Chief Constable, Scotland Yard, __London.

rckclmbr• 15 years ago

This can't be the same person. The laptop was stolen from his house while he was away. This would mean it would be a burglary charge, not robbery.

andrewpi• 15 years ago

In the US, the perp probably always pleads guilty, so there ends up not being a trial where the victim would be able to learn more about the case.

g-garron• 15 years ago

Maybe the criminal was a minor. At least in my country (Bolivia) if he is a minor almost nothing is done, he'll walk out free. I'm sure this is not the case in every country.

satiani• 15 years ago

I don't think there is a need to use the tracking software to build a case against the burglar. They caught him with stolen property and have fingerprints. No need to go high-tech here.

lawlit• 15 years ago

So now everyone who installs a "tracking software" on his laptop is a hacker. Really, the internet has changed.

rickdale• 15 years ago

I am sorry, but mere mortals have not heard of and don't use prey project. Hackers use prey project. Professional ones.

sudonim• 15 years ago

I just installed Prey. Ignoring the OP's use of the word "Hacker", you don't have to pay them anything to get good value from the software.

I set it up so if this file ever disappears http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/prey.html it starts sending me alert messages like the one below:

Good news my friend, it seems we found it.

Here's the report from your computer:

######################################################## # geo ########################################################

:: lat=(deleted)

:: lng=(deleted)

:: accuracy=33.0

######################################################## # network ########################################################

:: public ip=(deleted)

:: internal ip=192.168.8.121

:: gateway ip=192.168.8.1

:: mac address=34:15:9e:07:af:86

######################################################## # session ########################################################

:: logged user=sudonim

:: uptime=14:21 up 3:12, 6 users, load averages: 2.12 1.91 2.06

Happy hunting!

-------

Then it attaches a picture taken with my camera and a screenshot. All in all, pretty handy to have running.

tomaspollak4• 15 years ago

6 users! wow.

xelfer• 15 years ago

A single terminal session counts as a user, probably has a few open, plus the system login etc.

waffle_ss2• 15 years ago

Selling corporate firewall hardware doesn't make you a hacker

danparsonson2• 15 years ago

Well, who knows - maybe he has a life outside his job?

pothibo• 15 years ago

The guy browsed the internet for muslim revelation videos. I could have give him 1 tip to be in God/Allah's good Grace: Don't steal other people's stuff.

budu3• 15 years ago

Did Sam Odio's blog get hacked? Because I refuse to believe that the Sam whose comments I've been reading on HN would steal from someone. Sam how is what you're doing different from what Anonymous et al are doing? However irritating Jonathan's experiment is, it doesn't give you the right to impose you idea of morality on them.

hacketyhack• 15 years ago

You're in the wrong comment thread.

MatToufoutu• 15 years ago

Maybe this guy IS a hacker, or maybe he's NOT, I don't care, but the word hacker is worthless using in this story, didn't see any hack involved...

jcfrei4• 15 years ago

Am I the only one who feels that it's wrong to put someone's personal information and picture on the internet just because he stole a laptop? Of course you get your personal information stolen as well, but in my opinion that doesn't justify spreading his image and name all over the internet. that kind of intrusion into privacy (of the thief) is a much bigger crime in my eyes than the loss of some laptop.

aw3c22• 15 years ago

In the US it seems normal to even expose people's full names on any police stuff and/or after prosecution (I never paid too much attention what was what). Privacy and personal rights are very different in some countries. In germany we highly value personal rights and privacy.

CapitalistCartr2• 15 years ago

Think about it. Why do we put far more money into law enforcement than the cost of the crime? Because it's not just about that one laptop. If we don't get the point across to the criminal, he'll do far more damage to all of us. Most burglary is the result of a small number of people. Because few police departments treat that crime seriously, a single burglar gets away with hundreds of crimes before getting caught.

As for his privacy, he surrendered that voluntarily when he stole the laptop; the government didn't impose that sentence on him.

jcfrei4• 15 years ago

I don't think he surrendered his privacy voluntarily. exposing his picture and info has nothing to do with law enforcement - that's just self-administered justice. a well functioning state of law / rule of law (I dunno how you call it in english) works by sentencing criminals to prison according to the scale of their crime. not by punishing them overtly and excessively as a warning to other criminals (that's just barbaric).

waffle_ss2• 15 years ago

Yeah that's a good point. Although unlikely, the guy could have bought the laptop off of Craigslist or something.

randlet• 15 years ago

If a person breaks into/trashes/takes things from my personal space they are certainly giving up their right to anonymity in my eyes.

Why should I respect his privacy when he has absolutely abused mine?

jcfrei4• 15 years ago

he violated your privacy and so did you, when you installed a tracking software. the difference is that you're putting the information on the internet and he is not.

jokermatt999• 15 years ago

I disagree. Shame is a good deterrent to theft. Naming and shaming the thief could prevent future crimes.

Furthermore, I don't see how putting someone's information on the internet is comparable to physically depriving someone of their property. The latter has obvious effects, and the former may not even cause much harm. It would have never happened had the thief not stolen the laptop, so I'd say the ultimate blame rests on them anyway.

raganwald2• 15 years ago

We had this discussion the last time something like this was on HN, so I’ll try to summarize things from my biased point of view. The first thing is, some people (myself included) would say this fellow is a suspect but has yet to be convicted of a crime. Some people would wait until a conviction is registered to publish details like this.

Others take a pitchforks and torches approach. I recall people saying, “publish and let him sue if he doesn’t like it,” which is pretty much the same thing as saying “it might be wrong, but thanks to the difficulties of suing for libel, we can get away with it.”

I guess this is where we peel away all of our nobility and reveal the savages underneath. Some of us strongly believe in the justice system and the importance of treating the accused extremely fairly in theory, but in practice "we know the bastard did it, so there."

DanielBMarkham2• 15 years ago

Must it be the civilized versus the savages? Are you sure that's a fair description?

How about this: it's my laptop, and I reserve the right to use it to take pictures any time I see fit?

I'm okay with running the picture of the guy, and publishing the data, as long as there's a clear disclaimer that this is just information pulled from your own laptop, not presented as evidence in some kind of criminal proceeding. We do this all the time with videos on the news that show crimes in progress. Heck, we did it with the rioters. Local papers ran big pictures of them on the front page. Simply making public video and data that you have every right to have and use isn't the same as calling the guy a crook and demanding he be hanged.

Now yes, the mob will probably take over from there, but that's because the net is full of mobs, not because you've somehow made a mistake in publishing the data. I am very concerned about folks taking justice into their own hands, but I don't think that my concern somehow changes the right of this guy to publish his own data.

There's no "we know the bastard did it, so there" that has to be involved. I load my laptop up with whatever legal programs I like, and I choose to publish the data from those programs any time I feel like it.

exit• 15 years ago

"When it's a large group of Millwall supporters, in a pub all day, talking about doing the police's job for them, it creates the impression that they're spoiling for a fight, opportunistically – using the chaos to bust into a racial confrontation that they normally wouldn't be permitted, in a metaphorical echo of the looters they're determined to stop."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/10/uk-riots...

flocial• 15 years ago

This being London and with their libel laws the author could indeed be setting himself up for trouble.

benatkin• 15 years ago

I care more about the safety of my data than the safety of my computer, so I have FileVault full-drive encryption turned on. I don't think a thief could log into my computer without wiping the drive, which would wipe Prey if I had it installed. So I'm not going to bother installing it.

LogicX4• 15 years ago

Yes, the new filevault does make things tricky in this sense... however its just a matter of time til someone improves prey project to install to the new OSX Lion un-encrypted install (the one your system boots to, and prompts you to enter your credentials, before booting into the encrypted drive).

There's apparently a safari browser-only mode which can be activated from the login screen there.

This would create the ideal scenario for the stolen laptop: Thief without the knowledge or ability to reformat (particularly if you've slowed them down further with a firmware password) can only use the safari-browsing guest mode; can't get to your full encrypted drive, and Prey is recording and sending off everything they're doing.

xd3• 15 years ago

This article seems to imply this "hacker" used some actual skill set to retrieve their stolen goods. Installing tracking software on a mac and then bragging about it when stolen and then found doesn't fit with what I'd call being a hacker.

Nice story though. And I'm happy another rioting / looting is going to court to answer for there actions.

xd3• 15 years ago

The down votes seem to imply that I'm wrong. Please could someone enlighten me as to why I'm out of line here. Yeah, sure this guy calls himself a "Security Evangelist" but this has absolutely nothing to do with his skill set being used as a "hacker". Any Joe on the street could and likely has done what he has .. the title is sensationalism and frankly I've become tired of this nonsense in the media over these riots.

lostmypw2• 15 years ago

I suppose it's people being tired by the whole "hacker" hoopla, especially when people use the term to compare their e-peen, but also when the media confuses hackers with crackers.

To me, the hacker/cracker thing is just a lost battle and thus a big waste of time.

That being said, I'd only use "hacker" in the original sense, i.e. the hacker philosophy about exploring, learning and teaching. To me, a person with no clue about cars that learns to fix it themselves is by definition a hacker.

You all too often see people pulling the e-peen thing on the net, which I find sad, as it's also just another waste of time. The "correct" use of the term hacker is just a pretense imho.

In the same vein of whining and bitching: has there been another influx from reddit lately or is the cooling effect (or what it's called) only gradually noticeable? I've noticed that I'm more disappointed with the content and comments on HN lately, even more so on reddit obviously.

danparsonson2• 15 years ago

You're getting downvoted because he's not implying that installing Prey makes him a hacker. He updated his post as follows (possibly after you posted your comments?):

>Updated: to quell the comments, I did not choose the title to imply downloading tracking software is hacking, I am a hacker by profession and have been most my life.

gabaix• 15 years ago

404 page has been pulled out 1 min ago.

joshaidan4• 15 years ago

Looks like the story just got pulled. I wonder if it was from all the criticism over the use of the word hacker, or if it was for privacy reasons.

joshaidan4• 15 years ago

Oh, it's back now but the name of the school on the screen shot is wiped out, as well as the guys eyes are crossed off.

joshaidan4• 15 years ago

I noticed he forgot to black out the guy's IP address 90.201.72.42 in the screenshot.

joshaidan4• 15 years ago

Also, there's enough info to find the guys Facebook profile: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1019527331

mcantor2• 15 years ago

It's amazing how when big media releases a story about "hackers ruining America", people come out of the woodwork saying "actually, the term for someone who practices forced electronic entry is 'cracker', and 'hacker' just means someone who writes code", but when someone uses it that way, the HN post fills up with comments about how the term 'hacker' has been diluted.

PICK ONE, GUYS.

zbisch2• 15 years ago

The reason that people are annoyed is because the title of the article is misleading. Yes, this guy may be a "hacker" in the sense of the word that we all like to use (he's a programmer).

The issue is that the article is titled "Why you don't steal from a hacker". This is not actually an appropriate name for the article, because it's not the writer's status as a hacker that leads to the final result. It is the writer's position as an application user that leads to the final result. In that sense, this article be should called, "Why you don't steal from someone that knows how to use an application to track their stolen laptop". Hence, by replacing the the "application user" with "hacker" you are diluting the meaning of hacker that everyone here loves to use. I'm not trying to be critical, just explaining why people are stating this and that they are attempting to express a consistent stance. You may associate this type of activity with a hacker, but understandably, it is not what you'd come up with when you attempted to define a hacker.

mcantor2• 15 years ago

Well-argued!

ericd• 15 years ago

I think the headline implies that a hacker/security professional is more likely to have something like prey installed than, say, someone like my non-technical mom.

_pius• 15 years ago

What I worry about with many of these recovery stories is that you're probably not humiliating the criminal, just some unlucky person who bought the computer on Craigslist.

biot• 15 years ago

I was once looking to buy a Mac off of Craigslist. So I sent the guy an email to ask about it. Oh, you lost the keyboard and mouse? You don't have the original OS install disc? No receipt? The black power cord in the pictures looks like one of those PC specials? Yeah, what are the odds that you misplaced absolutely everything regarding the system except for the main unit itself? Stolen.

nakkiel• 15 years ago

A lot of bits wasted here about semantics but not a single one raising the multiple racist allusions on the linked blog post.

a3_nm• 15 years ago

This is neat, but it only works if your setup is simple enough to be usable by a random thief so that they can get an Internet connection ready so that the machine can phone home. Were someone to steal my laptop and boot it, they would reach a tty login prompt in a dvorak layout, and playing around in grub would also lead to an LFS install with a patched agetty greeting them in lolcat. (My LFS was just for fun, so I did silly stuff with it.)

In other words, they would probably just wipe the computer and install Windows, and I wouldn't hear about the machine. I guess I could have a Windows install ready with a guest account and sneaky tracking software just for the benefit of an hypothetical thief, but it doesn't seem worth the effort.

Andys• 15 years ago

Perhaps you are also meticulous enough to not allow your laptop out of your sight in the first place.

kirillzubovsky• 15 years ago

One problem I find with these tracking applications, at least for the average users, you actually have to remember that: (1) you have one installed and (2) your credentials.

It's kind of a problem, if you have all your other data stored using something like 1Password.

I know for sure I have a tracker installed on my laptop, but since it's running in "stealth" mode, I have no clue what it is or where to find it. I guess I am not hacky enough.

kragen• 15 years ago

Wait, all he had to do was report the guy's name, address, and photo to the police, and they got the computer back for him? It sounds like the London Metro Police are a lot better than the ones in, say, San Francisco.

gst3• 15 years ago

What I don't understand: I you're so concerned that someone steals your laptop, why do you then install tracking software instead of encrypting your harddrive?

If someone steals my laptop I wouldn't care about the cost of lost hardware. Instead I'd care more about my private data that now is in the hands of someone else.

kmm• 15 years ago

I guess it depends on the person. I have more private data on Facebook than I have on my computer. The cost would be a big problem to me though, I can't afford to buy a new laptop every year.

Void_• 15 years ago

This is exactly why I don't use password protection on my MacBook Pro.

Why you don't steal from a hacker.

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