8 ms·
Why you don't steal from a hacker.
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 15y agousing a laptop recovery service to do exactly what it was intended to do. sweet hack, bro!
- vasco 15y agoMy 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!
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- nikcub 15y agothe 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'
- icebraining 15y agoThe thief did more "hacking" by using the OSX install CD than him.
- swatthatfly 15y agoFrom 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.
- NathanKP 15y agoI'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 15y agoIs this one of the example you are looking for? http://gizmodo.com/5717309/what-happens-when-you-steal-a-hackers-computer http://gizmodo.com/5717309/what-happens-when-you-steal-a-hac... (talk from Def Con '11)
- wheels 15y agoReading 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.
- cazlab 15y agoYou say "professional hacker" to refer to yourself a lot, but as far as I can tell all you did was use someone else's product. Where is the hacking in that? Hacking is creative problem solving. You used a product for its intended purpose. That's called being a consumer, not a hacker. lame. self masturbatory. grow up. also I'm not anonymous you dipshit
- cazlab 15y agoYou say "professional hacker" to refer to yourself a lot, but as far as I can tell all you did was use someone else's product. Where is the hacking in that? Hacking is creative problem solving. You used a product for its intended purpose. That's called being a consumer, not a hacker. lame. self masturbatory article.
- Sargis 15y agoIs 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 15y agoI have prey too - it's awesome.
- bonzoesc 15y agoIt's free and open-source. I doubt they have the budget for a viral marketing campaign.
- lancefisher 15y agoThey might have the budget: http://preyproject.com/plans http://preyproject.com/plans
- tomaspollak 15y agono 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.
- tyler_ball 15y agoHere 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 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAI8S2houW4
- mrspeaker 15y agoI'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_ball 15y agoThat'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 15y agoThis 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.
- LogicX 15y 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.
- gst 15y agoIf 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.
- shabble 15y agoSet up a honeypot account 'm[ou]m', with a visible password hint to the tune of 'Dammit m[ou]m, THE PASSWORD IS "Susan"'. Make sure it has no access to the filesystem outside of its homedir, and you could even set some login items to watch for net access and push a notification.
- gst 15y agoThe honeypot account still needs access to the operating system, and thus to the harddisk password if you use full-disk encryption. Full disk encryption is more or less default for most Linux distributions and OS X Lion. In addition, it's the only sane solution if you want to securely encrypt your data.
- icebraining 15y 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 15y agoConsumer routers will typically have port 22 firewalled for incoming trafic.
- rograndom 15y agoRun 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.
- icebraining 15y agoOk, I'll rewrite: Why wouldn't he use his reverse SSH connection* to do that stuff? * Reverse SSH: if wget http://myserver.com/sshreverse 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.
- TheAmazingIdiot 15y agoId do one thing slightly different. I would set up an icmp proxy with ssh on top of that. And there would be a few good reasons for that. 1: it bypasses a whole lot of firewalls and captive gateways. 2: few hackers would expect such a communication mechanism like that. Of course, this solution works only if the computer isnt reformatted, as i would do if i ever got into petty theft. So one would need the computer to have an open and easy to get into account. If you use linux, have home directory encryption on and the account called "Administrator".
- dkokelley 15y agoI'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 15y agoPrey 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.
- NathanKP 15y agoI 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 15y ago"Hacking" is now referred to, someone posting on anothers facebook, since they were still logged in. /facepalm
- saturn7 15y agoHow the world has changed, Hackers use macs?
- breck 15y agoQuick look at the source code (https://github.com/tomas/prey 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.
- EGreg 15y agoWhy 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 15y agoIn 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.
- EGreg 15y agoObviously I mean a remotely activated keylogger - the computer goes online and checks a website to see if it should start the keylogging
- drdaeman 15y agoEncrypt 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!
- gregcmartin 15y agoSorry 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...
- dasil003 15y agoYes, 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.
- icebraining 15y 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.
- dasil003 15y agoThat's a value judgement. As a hacker you can't do everything. Prey is a polished product that you can trust to work. If you are into this sort of thing, certainly you can achieve more functionality and better security by rolling your own, but I don't consider it a prerequisite to hackerdom anymore than soldering your own motherboards. How often do you expect your laptop to be stolen anyway?
- icebraining 15y agoThe thing is: rolling my own takes less time than installing Prey. Of course, it won't have bells and whistles, but it'll be much less limited.
- rickdale 15y agoI am sorry, but mere mortals have not heard of and don't use prey project. Hackers use prey project. Professional ones.
- rajpaul 15y 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.
- jff 15y agoWhen 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 15y agoSame 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 15y agoCan 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 15y agoGlad 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 15y agoI'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 15y agoI'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 15y agoThe 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 15y agoI 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.
- lawlit 15y agoSo now everyone who installs a "tracking software" on his laptop is a hacker. Really, the internet has changed.
- sudonim 15y agoI 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 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.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- tomaspollak 15y ago6 users! wow.
- xelfer 15y agoA single terminal session counts as a user, probably has a few open, plus the system login etc.
- waffle_ss 15y agoSelling corporate firewall hardware doesn't make you a hacker
- danparsonson 15y agoWell, who knows - maybe he has a life outside his job?
- garron 15y agoWhat about "Hacker News"?, some of the news here are not Hacker specific. In the guidelines of this site, it says, that here can be posted articles that comply with this: "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" So, this site could have be named "Intellectual's News", and not Hacker News? I'm not a hacker, and love to read the stories here, this is my favorite site to read news every morning. Yes, you are all right, the term Hacker is misused everyday, and the tendency is growing.
- budu3 15y agoDid 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 15y agoYou're in the wrong comment thread.
- MatToufoutu 15y agoMaybe 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...
- pothibo 15y agoThe 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.
- jcfrei 15y agoAm 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.
- Kirchart123 15y agoKarma is a bitch when u r a bitch ... Just dont stol laptos nd ur image will not be on the internetz
- aw3c2 15y agoIn 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.
- CapitalistCartr 15y agoThink 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.
- jcfrei 15y agoI 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).
- benatkin 15y agoI 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.
- LogicX 15y agoYes, 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.
- xd 15y agoThis 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.
- xd 15y agoThe 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.
- lostmypw 15y agoI 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.
- xd 15y agoCouldn't agree with you more. If you're a mechanic, you don't brag about calling the AA to home-start your wheels. You would be pretty shocked to see a mechanic post a story about his home-start on a hobby enthusiasts news site and see the community there voting the story up.
- gabaix 15y ago404 page has been pulled out 1 min ago.
- joshaidan 15y agoLooks 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.
- joshaidan 15y agoOh, 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.
- joshaidan 15y agoI noticed he forgot to black out the guy's IP address 90.201.72.42 in the screenshot.
- joshaidan 15y agoAlso, there's enough info to find the guys Facebook profile: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1019527331 https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1019527331
- mcantor 15y agoIt'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.
- zbisch 15y agoThe 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.
- mcantor 15y agoWell-argued!
- ericd 15y agoI 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.
- zbisch 15y agoI think that's also a very reasonable point of view. However, at the same time, I its also reasonable to say that there is a group that could include people we would consider non-hackers that use this type of application (e.g., those with any sensitive/private information on their computers). Maybe they wouldn't use the exact same application, but something to track their laptop may be of use. Then again, maybe those people can afford a system with a built in tracking devise that can't easily be removed (requires more than just wiping the system). Meanwhile, hackers are left to add a "hack" to their computer that can do the same thing. Honestly, I see your point, and both sides. I've just met a few people that have a similar service installed onto their phones, and I certainly would not call them hackers. Similarly, if someone told me they had this installed on their computer, I wouldn't think, "Oh, cool! S/he's a hacker!" On the other hand, if I saw someone starting "Learn Python the Hard Way" I _would_ think, "Oh shit, s/he's becoming a hacker!". Anyway, I don't really care too much. You do make a good point though. In general, a hacker might be more likely to aggressively try to track you down :)
- _pius 15y agoWhat 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 15y agoI 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 15y agoA lot of bits wasted here about semantics but not a single one raising the multiple racist allusions on the linked blog post.
- a3_nm 15y agoThis 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 15y agoPerhaps you are also meticulous enough to not allow your laptop out of your sight in the first place.
- kirillzubovsky 15y agoOne 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 15y agoWait, 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.
- gst 15y agoWhat 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 15y agoI 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_ 15y agoThis is exactly why I don't use password protection on my MacBook Pro.