Over the past few months Portland area schools have been victimized by a number burglaries targeting computer equipment. One of the schools had enough and installed GadgetTrak software on a number of laptops. Within a week the school was broken into again, but this time they stole the wrong laptops. The software was activated and started sending photos of who was using the stolen computer and location, with this information the police were able to work with GadgetTrak to identify the location of the device. The police recovered the laptop and identified key suspects for at least four of the school burglaries that have occured over the past few months.
We were featured in a great piece by Good Morning America on Christmas Day regarding how to protect the gadgets your received on Christmas Day. GadgetTrak was featured as tip number two:
GadgetTrak uses GPS and WiFi signals to locate your lost electronic and lock it down remotely so a thief cannot use it and police can track it.
This is actually the second time GadgetTrak has featured on Good Morning America, in a previous episode our technology was also described in more depth with technology corespondent Becky Worley:
Through the majority of our recoveries one thing I have noticed that has tied them together, they involved a methamphetamine addict. Doing some research it is shocking to learn that nationally police believe that 75-80% of all property crimes are committed by people addicted to methamphetamine, or who profit from addicts. It is not only the device being fenced for quick money or drugs, but also identity theft as the devices sold are full of valuable data. We will be donating $100 to The Meth Project for every theft recovery we make that involves a methamphetamine addict.
A customer who installed GadgetTrak software on his MacBook had it returned to him yesterday. The MacBook went on long journey from Portland to Missouri after the customer’s laptop was stolen from his residence during a burglary. After a few weeks the laptop connected to the Internet and sent its location and photos of the person using the system in Missouri. Over the course of a few days several photos and locations were captured, as well as the name of the person using the system and other data, all provided to law enforcement.
The laptop exchanged hands a few times with a full audit trail left thanks to GadgetTrak’s software, which has had a number of successful recoveries over the past few months including one in Brooklyn, New York and another in Oakland, California all of which unveiled larger crimes and theft rings. If you are part of the press and would like more information regarding this recovery including the contact details of the police detectives who worked on the case feel free to contact us directly at 503-799-8610.
GadgetTrak has recovered a stolen iMac in New York that had GadgetTrak installed. The system was stolen two weeks ago and then connected to the Internet two days ago, the device was recovered this morning. GadgetTrak’s MacTrak software captured a photo of who was using the system as well as pinpointed the location within a few meters, all of the data was uploaded automatically to the device owner’s Flickr account and email. The NYPD followed up and recovered the system, along with two other stolen laptops from different cases.
The device was tracked using GadgetTrak’s Wi-Fi positioning to a tattoo parlor in Brooklyn, where the iMac and the other laptops were found in a back office.
We received an email from our customer with a photo of him and his recovered iMac, as well as this great testimonial:
” After a previous burglary of my home, I installed GadgetTrak on my iMac desktop, a computer I cherished for its power and sleek appearance. Sure enough, six months later, I was robbed again. However, with the help of GadgetTrak and the NYPD, I got my computer back! Like insurance, this software was something I debated on getting. When I did, I hoped I would never have to use it and was only buying peace of mind, yet it has proven its value fifty times over. The police were able to recover two other stolen computers as well. Words cannot express my gratitude for this genius software. ” - A
From the Associated Press, “A piece of anti-theft software built into many laptops at the factory opens a serious security hole, according to research presented Thursday.” Research by Alfredo Ortega and Anibal Sacco with Boston-based Core Security Technologies, and presented Thursday at the Black Hat security conference here, shows how BIOS based security software can allow a criminal to take control of a machine.
GadgetTrak’s Laptop Security software is not vulnerable to this security hole, as our software does not need to be embedded in the BIOS of the system, nor allow a backdoor into the system. Measures taken by GadgetTrak in the architecture of our solution to protect users privacy also mitigates the risk of such an attack. As GadgetTrak’s software does not provide a back door into the system that monitoring center staff can acccess and the tracking data is sent to the owner of the device, there is no back door into the system that would allow an attacker to take control of the system.
The company that makes the software in the study claims that the findings are not true, however has not provided proof to the contrary. It is interesting to watch the company on Twitter, having employees Tweet that it is not true repeatedly, maybe if you say something enough times it will be true. Instead evidence should be presented to consumers and manufacturers, as the agent is embedded in 60% of laptops on the market, just not activated on all of them. Consumers have the right to more information regarding this security hole and not just a company saying “it is not true,” this is both irresponsible and shows a lack of respect for their customers.
In a bold, systematic hit on a landmark Ventura Boulevard office building, burglars stole scores of computers from at least 60 businesses there, taking machines containing sensitive legal documents, credit card numbers and the tax information of thousands of people.
The theft at the Chateau Office Building in Woodland Hills left accountants, a talent agent, property management companies, attorneys and other businesses in the three-story structure scrambling to assess their losses as police scoured the premises.
Deputy Chief Michel Moore of the Los Angeles Police Department said that computers, some files and other items were taken from the 60 businesses.
The theft appears to be targeting data, as it was only computers that were stolen and the thieves left behind other valuable equipment, including monitors, faxes, copiers and printers. Several business owners and law enforcement concluded that the thieves’ target must have been the information contained on their hard drives, not property.
One business owner said the credit card numbers of 7,000 clients were stolen. Accountant Richard Levy said his stolen computer held the tax documents of 800 clients. Attorney Marshall Bitkower said only three computers were taken from his office, but “they had all kinds of stuff. Everything: people’s names, credit cards, clients, e-mails back and forth — who knows what.”
The company also offers MacTrak for Mac laptop owners, which is a little different than the one I mentioned earlier for Windows PCs. MacTrak makes use of whatever Wi-Fi networks are within the laptop’s range in order to locate it within 10-20 metres. The website even gives you the chance to type in an address to see if it’s covered by the software. Generally speaking, it covers major urban centres in North America, Europe and Asia.
But a really cool thing it does is utilize the Mac’s built-in iSight Webcam to snap images of whomever is using your stolen computer. The images are automatically uploaded to your Flickr account every 30 minutes, along with the location and data. If you don’t have a Flickr account, then fear not because it also sends the images and info to your email address as well.
Eighty computers have been lost, stolen or gone “missing” at a major US nuclear weapons lab, the nonprofit watchdog group Project On Government Oversight (POGO) has stated.
The group posted online a copy of what they say is an internal letter outlining what appear to be worrisome losses at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the state of New Mexico.
The letter says that 13 lab computers were lost or stolen during the past year, three of the machines taken from an employee’s home in January. Another 67 computers are deemed “missing.”
“The magnitude of exposure and risk to the laboratory is at best unclear as little data on these losses has been collected or pursued,” the letter dated February 3 maintains.
The letter, addressed to Department of Energy security officials, contends that “cyber security issues were not engaged in a timely manner” because the computer losses were treated as a “property management issue.”
What became of the missing computers and the “security ramifications of each of the 80 systems” was to be detailed in a written report to lab officials by February 6, according to the letter.
The Los Alamos lab is a major center for research related to national security, outer space, renewable energy, medicine, nanotechnology, and supercomputing.
UPDATE: Nicco is now a GadgetTrak customer. After going through the pain of losing his MacBook Air, he wanted to make sure his new one did not suffer the same fate and installed MacTrak on this system.
So I was browsing through Flickr today and I came across this image:
Come to find out this was printed up by Nicco Mele who had his MacBook Air on his chair to get a cup of coffee. He was so angry about being violated like this that he decided to offer a huge reward hoping the thief would reveal himself:
Cracking a laptop password is a lot easier than most people think, regardless of operating system whether it is Windows, OS X or even Linux. Password protected laptops may slow a thief down, but gaining access to a stolen laptop is quite easy as there are open source and commercial tools available specifically for this function. According to LaptopTheft.org a 14 character password can be cracked within minutes.
We received a nice letter today from Clarion West Writers Workshop:
Thank you so much for your gift of GadgetTrak for the PC, Clarion West has passed this gift on to the students whose laptops were stolen on July 4, 2008.
Because of your generosity, the students have gone from feeling stunned and devastated to feeling supported, encouraged and deeply appreciative of the big-hearted people in the Sci-Fi writing community. The emotional support from the community was as important to the students as the monetary support in getting the workshop back on track.
Unencrypted laptops containing 31,000 patient records have been lost by two NHS trusts.
A laptop containing 11,000 patient records was stolen from a GP’s home in Wolverhampton. And St George’s Hospital in London has admitted that six laptops were stolen from its filing cabinets at the start of the month, containing the records of 20,000 patients.
Both data breaches break Department of Health policy that states NHS mobile devices must be protected by encryption. Neither trust has offered an explanation as to why the data was unencrypted.
A laptop containing close to 175,000 patient records belonging to the Irish Blood Transfusion Service was stolen in New York.
This bad news comes within weeks of government officials in Ireland warning that data protection in government departments needed better controls. Quinn reported that nearly 100 notebook and desktop PCs have been lost or stolen from Irish government departments over the past five years, along with 14 BlackBerry smartphones and 11 portable media devices.
Five thousand Health Net employees in Connecticut and other states have been notified that their names and Social Security numbers were on a laptop computer that was stolen from a company vendor. There is no mention of encryption or theft recovery software on the system.
According to a recent study UK business travellers lose up to 8,500 mobile devices at UK airports every year. The worst airports for mobile device lose were London airports where more than 400 laptops and 2,500 other mobile devices (mobile phones, iPods etc) are lost annually.
The laptops, mobile phones, mobile phones and USB sticks contain potentially sensitive information and pose security risks for businesses. This also makes airports a haven for thieves. In addition for the need to encrypt sensitive data it is important to have a means to recover the devices when they are stolen.
GadgetTrak Verey is the best anti-theft solution available for Mac computers. It is the only theft recovery solution that captures video of thieves, gathers network data and is compatible with Leopard.
GadgetTrak PhoneBak is the only theft recovery solution available for mobile phones that works with Windows Mobile, Symbian and soon to be announced Blackberrry and Sony Ericsson phones.
GadgetTrak USB is the only patent-pending solution for recovering removable media devices such as USB flash drives, external hard drives, digital camers, iPods and other USB storage devices.
Since not everyone is a thief, all GadgetTrak subscriptions come with our lost and found system. A GadgetTrak label that can be put on your devices. The label has a customized code with a URL for the finder to visit. When the code is put into the system it checks to see if the device belongs to a subscriber and if so presents the finder with a form to contact the owner. This system protects our subscribers identity while still allowing the finder to get in contact with the owner.
A laptop computer containing sensitive personal information about Butte Community Bank customers was stolen from an employee who travels to each of the bank’s fifteen (15) branch offices. The data appears to have been unencrypted and did not have any theft recovery software installed. The notice sent to customers state the data is “password protected” however this is trivial if the data is not encrypted. The theft occurred in the middle of October and the data includes the regular “steal my identity” information such as name, address, Social Security number, account numbers and other data. The Bank will not indicate how many customers were affected, or how many noticed were sent out.
At City University of New York a laptop was stolen from a financial aid office. The laptop contained sensitive personal information on the 23,000 current and former students.
Colleges are a hot bed for data theft, primarily due to lax security standards, absent minded professors and the wealth of data available for the taking. Colleges and Universities need to do more to protect student data, it is their responsibility to implement policies and enforce them, as well as educate staff (tenured or not) about the threats posed by careless handling of data. Had GadgetTrak Verey been installed on this laptop, the information on the system would have been difficult to access and the laptop recovered in a short amount of time limiting the risk of identity theft for these students.
Two laptop computers were stolen from the offices of an unnamed human resources company which contained personal job applicant data pertaining to Gap Inc. job candidates who applied between July, 2006 and June, 2007. This theft affects over 80, 000 applicants along with their social security numbers.
We were featured in a great piece by Good Morning America on Christmas Day regarding how to protect the gadgets your received on Christmas Day. GadgetTrak was featured as tip number two:
