86 Burglars Were Asked How They Broke Into Homes

KGW: We asked 86 burglars how they broke into homes

What burglars said were the biggest deterrents, what didn't stop them and how you can protect your home.

Do you ever wonder whether your home security system or “Beware of Dog” sign actually keeps burglars away?

We did too. So KGW's investigative team sent letters to 86 inmates currently serving time for burglary in the Oregon Department of Corrections. The inmates were asked to respond anonymously to 17 questions detailing how they broke in, when the crime occurred and what they were looking for.

What we learned could help you keep your home safe from burglaries.

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CSN Editor: The GF has a Rottweiler. The best deterrent that I ever saw.

What Happens When Your Smart Phone Is Stolen (Video)

Laughing Squid: Dutch Filmmaker Intentionally Lets His Phone Get Stolen In Order to Follow Its Path Through Spyware

Dutch filmmaker Anthony van der Meer decided to intentionally allow a thief to steal his mobile phone in order to find out what happens afterwards, using spyware that he installed ahead of time. The resulting film, entitled “Find my Phone” shows how just much information a thief can get with someone else’s phone.

In the Netherlands, 300 police reports a week are filed for smartphone-theft. Besides losing your expensive device, a stranger has access to all of your photos, videos, e-mails, messages and contacts. Yet, what kind of person steals a phone? And where do stolen phones eventually end up? The short documentary ‘Find My Phone’ follows a stolen phone’s second life by means of using spyware.

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CSN Editor: I can deal with losing my phone. But losing my photos, videos, and other personal information ... that is where it really hurts.

'Tyupkin' Malware Lets Criminals Steal Millions From ATMs Around The World

Infected Cash Machines Are Giving Away Money: 'Tyupkin' Malware Lets Criminals Steal Millions From ATMs Around The World -- Daily Mail

* Malicious software allows thieves to visit cash machines and empty them
* Money has been stolen from machines in Latin America, Europe and Asia
* ATMs are deliberately infected with so-called Tyupkin malware by criminals
* They then visit the machines at night and enter codes to access the cash
* Security experts have warned banks to boost the security of ATMs

Computer viruses may make your laptop run slower and even steal personal details such as passwords, but they can also attack cash machines - with expensive results.

Experts have forensically investigated cybercriminal attacks targeting ATMs around the world and have discovered a piece of malware called 'Tyupkin' that is leaving hundreds of machines at risk.

This malicious software allows thieves to visit cash machines and empty them – stealing millions in the process - without the need for a card.

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My Comment: Not so secure after-all.

The New Crime Wave

Automatic Bank Robbers Making A Killing -- Tech Eye

Don't even need a mask or a shooter just pray to Zeus

The days of masked robbers walking into a bank with a sawn off shotgun have gone the way of the Highwayman.

According to Reuters, a new wave of automated hacking of online bank accounts has lifted $78 million in the past year from customers in Europe, Latin America and the United States.

Insecurity experts working for McAfee and Guardian Analytics said that the weapon of choice is no longer a shooter but one of two families of existing malicious software, Zeus and SpyEye.

Previous versions of the software automate the transfer of funds to money mule accounts controlled by mates.

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My Comment: $78 million may not seem much .... but I suspect that this is just the beginning and that this crime will grow exponentially with time.

New Zealand Police Made 'Errors' During Raid On Megaupload Boss

Web domains belonging to Megaupload have been seized and shut down

Police Made 'Errors' During Raid On Megaupload Boss -- BBC

A police blunder could mean luxury cars, giant TVs and jewellery seized during a police raid will be returned to Megaupload owner Kim Dotcom.

The property was confiscated during a dawn raid on the New Zealand home of the file-sharing site's owner.

A New Zealand judge has now ruled that the court order used to justify the seizure should never have been granted.

The raid led to the closure of Megaupload and seizure of the web domains it used.

Judge Judith Potter said the court order should now be considered "null and void".

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My Comment: At least Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom can now pay his lawyers.

How Can I Track My Stolen Gadget?

Laptop LoJack Nigel Buchanan

Ask a Geek: How Can I Track My Stolen Gadget? -- Popular Science

Thieves make off with millions of dollars’ worth of laptops and mobile devices every year. Most stolen gadgets go unrecovered, but tracking software can help. The software runs in the background of the operating system or, with some services, the boot-level layer, which makes detecting the tracker much more difficult. Services like Prey provide free software for up to three laptops or Android devices. BlackBerry, iPhone or iPad owners can use GadgetTrak (from $4).

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Are Criminal Minds Different From Yours?

CT scans of a human brain. CREDIT: Dreamstime

Criminal Minds Are Different From Yours, Brain Scans Reveal -- Live Science

The latest neuroscience research is presenting intriguing evidence that the brains of certain kinds of criminals are different from those of the rest of the population.

While these findings could improve our understanding of criminal behavior, they also raise moral quandaries about whether and how society should use this knowledge to combat crime.

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My Comment: Hmmm .... this is going to open a Pandora's box.

New Techniques To Find Fingerprints Is Helping To Solve Crimes

Image: University of Abertay Dundee/Scottish Police Services Authority)

Fingerprints On Fabrics Could Now Solve Crimes -- New Scientist

Picture the scene: a body is found dead after falling from a high balcony. As forensics teams gather at the scene they need to understand whether it was an accident or something more sinister. Now, the dead man's shirt might hold the answer.

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The “CSI Effect”

From The Economist:

Television dramas that rely on forensic science to solve crimes are affecting the administration of justice.

OPENING a new training centre in forensic science (pictured above) at the University of Glamorgan in South Wales recently, Bernard Knight, formerly one of Britain’s chief pathologists, said that because of television crime dramas, jurors today expect more categorical proof than forensic science is capable of delivering. And when it comes to the gulf between reality and fiction, Dr Knight knows what he is talking about: besides 43 years’ experience of attending crime scenes, he has also written dozens of crime novels.

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Copyright Violation Alert Ransomware In The Wild

From ZNET:

A currently ongoing ransomware campaign is using a novel approach to extort money from end users whose PCs have been locked down.

By pretending to be the fake ICPP Foundation (icpp-online.com), the ransomware locks down the user’s desktop issuing a “Copyright violation: copyrighted content detected” message, which lists torrent files found on the infected PC, and forces the user to pay $400 for the copyright holder’s fine, emphasizing on the fact that “the maximum penalties can be five years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines.

More details on the campaign:

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'Infections Found': Inside The Great Scareware Scam

Fake virus scans often look just like the real thing.

From New Scientist:

ONE day in March 2008, Kent Woerner got a disturbing phone call from a teacher at an elementary school in Beloit, Kansas. An 11-year-old student had triggered a security scan on a computer she was using, revealing that the machine contained pornographic images. Worse still, the images had appeared on-screen as the scan took place.

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Art Of The Steal: On The Trail Of World’s Most Ingenious Thief

Gerald Blanchard could hack any bank, swipe any jewel. There was no security system he couldn't steal. Illustration: Justin Wood

From Wired:

The plane slowed and leveled out about a mile aboveground. Up ahead, the Viennese castle glowed like a fairy tale palace. When the pilot gave the thumbs-up, Gerald Blanchard looked down, checked his parachute straps, and jumped into the darkness. He plummeted for a second, then pulled his cord, slowing to a nice descent toward the tiled roof. It was early June 1998, and the evening wind was warm. If it kept cooperating, Blanchard would touch down directly above the room that held the Koechert Diamond Pearl. He steered his parachute toward his target.

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How Do You Force Criminals To Change Their Behavior?

From Boston.com:

How do you force criminals to change their behavior?

Over the last 35 years, the US criminal justice system has been spectacularly bad at answering this question. America is the most punitive nation in the world, with 2.4 million of its citizens behind bars and another 5.1 million on probation or parole. Yet according to the latest national statistics, two-thirds of released prisoners commit another serious offense within three years. After a generation of draconian crime policy, America’s crime rates are still among the highest in the Western world. Instead of one costly problem, we now have two: crime and mass incarceration.

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Fingertip Bacteria: A Promising Forensic Tool

Credit: Technology Review

From Technology Review:

The genetic makeup of microbes on a person's skin could provide crime scene evidence.

It's not just our genomes that make us unique. The genomic profile of bacteria that rub off our fingertips and onto objects we touch--a computer keyboard, for instance--also provides a "fingerprint" that could be used for forensic purposes, according to researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Noah Fierer, Rob Knight, and colleagues recovered bacteria from keyboards of three individuals and sequenced large numbers of bacterial genomes at once.

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Wiseguys Indicted In $25 Million Online Ticket Ring

From Wired News:

A ring of ticket brokers has been indicted in connection to an elaborate hacking scheme that used bots and other fraudulent means to purchase more than 1 million tickets for concerts, sporting events and other events.

The defendants made more than $25 million in profits from the resale of the tickets between 2002 and 2009.

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More News On This Ticket Scam

Four Men Indicted In Online Ticket Scam -- PC World
Four men charged in computerized online ticket scam -- CNET
Four Indicted in CAPTCHA Hacks of Ticket Sites -- PC Magazine
4 Californians indicted in alleged ticket reselling scam -- L.A. Times
Couldn’t Get Those Coveted Gaga Tickets? Here’s Why -- Wall Street Journal
Wiseguys net $25m in ticket scalping racket -- Register

Nose Scanning Techniques Could Sniff Out Criminals

Faces were analysed and mapped with a computer program

From The BBC:

We already have iris and fingerprint scanning but noses could be an even better method of identification, says a study from the University of Bath, UK.

The researchers scanned noses in 3D and characterised them by tip, ridge profile and the nasion, or area between the eyes.

They found 6 main nose types: Roman, Greek, Nubian, hawk, snub and turn-up.

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Can Sophisticated Mathematical Models Help Police Fight Crime?

From Popular Mechanics:

Is it possible to predict crimes from studying human behavior? A new paper from researchers at the University of California shows how mathematical modeling may soon lead to truly predictive police work.

If television crime shows and Hollywood thrillers are to be believed, criminals are intelligent, complex people. It takes a crack team to catch these masterminds who usually elude the authorities time and again.

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Are Criminals Born Bad?

From Times Online:

The field of neurocriminology is reviving some controversial ideas. Can criminal urges really be blamed on the brain?

We are used to hearing talk of “the criminal mind”. In future we can expect to hear more about “the criminal brain”. Recent scientific research suggests that criminality may be a trait tha t some people are born with or acquire very early in life. It’s an unsettling thought: examine the prefrontal cortex in the brain of a gurgling infant and you may see the signs of a potential future murderer.

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A Dangerous Pastime for Teens: The Choking Game

A hand around the neck cuts off blood supply to the brain
Patrick Ryan / Getty

From Time Magazine:

When Françoise Cochet saw the cord around her son's neck, she knew that he was dead. Fully clothed and still wearing his sneakers, 14-year-old Nicolas had strangled himself sometime after dinner in their apartment in Nice, France. His mother found him the next morning. "I shut the door so my other two children couldn't see and I didn't touch the body," she says. "I thought that I couldn't live anymore. I thought I needed to die too."

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Report: FBI Investigating Citibank Cyberattack

From CNET:

Citigroup denies it, but its Citibank unit was reportedly robbed of tens of millions of dollars, the victim of a cyberattack by members of a Russian criminal gang, says Tuesday's Wall Steet Journal (subscription required).

The attack was discovered this past summer, says the Journal, but investigators for the FBI and National Security Agency believe it could have happened months or a year prior. The two agencies have reportedly shared information with the Department of Homeland Security and Citigroup to defend against the attack. The investigation is supposedly ongoing, with no word on whether or not any of the stolen money has been found.

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