Jeffrey A. Setaro wrote:
> salwithed@yahoo.com says...
>> "Yahoo (Reuters) is reporting that the FBI has caught the guy who
>> stole computers from Wells Fargo. The interesting part is that
>> 'Investigators traced the computer to Krastof when he logged onto his
>> own America Online account at home through one of the stolen
>> computers.' Makes you wonder what sort of hooks the FBI has into AOL
>> or other ISPs and what hardware identification is being transmitted
>> at login."
>>
>>
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0...tid=123&tid=99
>>
>
> It's far more likely that Wells Fargo had installed Computrace Plus
> (or something similar) on the laptop.


The San Francisco Chronicle reports the thief logged onto the laptop owner's
AOL account.

Full story here:
http://************/wzub
and a snip below.

Lance
*****

The San Francisco Chronicle
NOVEMBER 27, 2003, THURSDAY, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A1; LAZARUS AT LARGE

<snip>
Still, Benjamin Jun, vice president of Cryptography Research, a San
Francisco security consulting firm, said it looked like the case of the
stolen Wells Fargo data came straight from "the crooks-are-dumb file."

Investigators knew where to look for the gear not because of unusually
intrepid sleuthing but because Krastof allegedly used the computer to log on
to an AOL account belonging to the system's owner, Peter Gascoyne.

This allowed authorities to eventually trace the call back to Krastof's
residence, said the Police Department's White, who acknowledged that
cracking the case was, as much as anything, a matter of pure luck.

Jun at Cryptography Research said most people don't realize that they
announce their presence and leave an electronic trail any time they go
online.

"Using a stolen computer to log onto the Net is like taking a stolen credit
card (and) buying gas for all your friends at a single service station," he
said. "It's pretty easy to get caught."
<snip>