theft
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Jerks are plagiarizing 'Fallout 4' PC mods on Xbox One
Maybe the team at Bethesda should've seen this coming: Now that mods are available for Fallout 4 on Xbox One, the more unscrupulous among us are apparently stealing creations that originated on the game's PC version and uploading them for Microsoft's latest console. Some flagrant examples noticed by Reddit users include in-game mods there were hosted exclusively on modding emporium Nexus Mods being added to Bethesda.net as original creations, with uploaders even copying and pasting the PC-centric installation instructions into the mod description.
Report: Bank network flaw helped hackers steal $80 million
Thieves who stole $81 million from the Bangladesh Bank may have been aided by a security flaw in the SWIFT international banking network, according to Reuters. Security researchers from BAE found malware designed to help thieves delete transfer information to hide their tracks. "I can't think of a case where we have seen a criminal go to the level of effort to customize it for the environment they were operating in," says BAE's Adrian Nish. SWIFT, a coop with 3,000 member banks, confirmed that it knew about malware targeting its client software, though Bangladesh police say they haven't found it on the bank's servers yet.
Hackers tried and failed to steal a billion dollars from bank
Hackers stole $80 million from a bank, but it could have been a lot worse if they had just Googled the name of a company, according to Reuters. Thieves got inside servers of the Bangladesh Bank, stealing the credentials used to make online transfers. They then bombarded the Federal Reserve Bank in New York with up to 13 money transfer requests to organizations in the Philippines and Sri Lanka. The Fed allowed four to go through totaling $81 million, but the next one was flagged by a routing bank in Germany because the hackers misspelled "foundation" as "fandation."
Ex-NBA player gets community service after stealing $15,000 from Apple Store
Former NBA player Rex Chapman has pleaded guilty to four felony counts of theft after being arrested for stealing more than $15,000 worth of merchandise from an Apple Store in Scottsdale, Arizona last year. Chapman reportedly used a store's self-checkout system on seven different occasions but left without paying each time. He then allegedly sold the items for cash at a local pawn shop. He has been sentenced to a 28-day substance-abuse treatment program at the Brook Hospital in Louisville as well as 750 hours of community service. He'll also be placed on probation. He will also be required to pay the Apple Store more than $15,000 in restitution and be liable for up to $10,000 more should the store discover any additional incidents of theft. [Image Credit: NBAE/Getty Images]
Former 'Game of War' exec arrested for stealing company secrets
A former manager at the company that makes Game of War -- that's the one with Kate Upton, not the one with Ned Stark -- has been arrested for allegedly downloading trade secrets relating to the title. Jing Zeng was grabbed by FBI agents at the airport shortly before he was due to board a flight to Beijing on August 20th. As the Wall Street Journal reports, it's the latest in a series of efforts by American companies to prevent the theft of sensitive data, which is often taken by rival nations. It's not clear if Zeng had any intention to share the information with others, since at the same time he was engaged in brinksmanship with his employers concerning a severance package. The case has yet to go to trial, but we'd suggest that no matter how much you hate your colleagues, you'll probably hate a trip to the slammer slightly more.
Former Mt. Gox CEO arrested in Japan over missing bitcoin
It's been months since Tokyo police revealed their belief that the Mt. Gox bitcoin heist was an inside job, and tonight they arrested its former CEO, Mark Karpeles. Some 650,000 bitcoin still remain unaccounted for since the exchange shut down in 2014, which Karpeles blamed on a computer flaw. According to the Wall Street Journal and The Japan News, police in Japan believe Karpeles manipulated the balances of the accounts using it to counter orders from customers and that some of the missing bitcoin may have never existed at all.
Silk Road investigator pleads guilty to stealing bitcoins
Disgraced DEA agent Carl Force has pleaded guilty to charges of extortion, money laundering and obstruction of justice. The official committed the crimes while himself investigating the online black market Silk Road, as well as the activities of its founder, Russ "Dread Pirate Roberts" Ulbricht. In a statement from the Department of Justice, Force used "Nob," a DEA-sanctioned online persona to conduct some after hours business with Ulbricht, amongst other things.
Your Apple Watch can be reset pretty easily (update)
Apple's Activation Lock made the iPhone less desirable to thieves, since they'd also need your Apple password to use it. The Watch is supposed to be similarly unhackable, but the built-in security apparently doesn't work very well, according to a site called iDownloadBlog. It demonstrated that the passcode protection that's supposed to kick in when you take the watch off can easily be bypassed by "force touching" the power-off option, as shown in the video below. That will erase everything sans passcode, letting thieves pair your Watch with another iPhone and make it their own. Since the Watch is currently desirable and hard to get, Apple had better jump on the problem, stat. Update: The bypass is documented as a feature on Apple's support site, as a way in if you've forgotten the passcode, and don't have the paired iPhone around. While some sort of activation lock seems like a good idea in case of theft, Apple clearly knows this workaround exists, and has opted on the edge of convenience over additional theft protection for now. [Thanks, Glenn Fleishman!]
Land Rover fails in its bid to block Chinese copycats
China is famous for many things, but a deeply-held respect for the concept of intellectual property isn't one of them. It's a problem that Land Rover has just run into head-first after its claims that the Land Wind X7 was a shameless copy of its Range Rover Evoque fell upon deaf ears. Autocar is reporting that, not only did authorities dismiss the complaint, but the Chinese company has been given permission to start manufacturing the vehicle.
Showing off 'Grand Theft Auto V' for PC comes with a high price
If someone accidentally puts some personal information online, you'd hope that others wouldn't prey on the mistake. Unfortunately, mercy is a rare commodity on the internet, as a few honest (albeit preventable) mistakes have cost some game streamers their copies of Grand Theft Auto V. As Kotaku reports, when the new PC edition of the game launches, the first thing it offers up is a splash screen with your registration key displayed at the bottom. That's a problem for those who unwittingly started the stream a few moments too soon, since the information was quickly screenshotted and the game was promptly stolen. Today's lesson, then, has two parts: People are terrible, and don't stream GTA V until you're sure your desktop is clear.
Electron microscopes stop thieves from covering their tracks
Ask the police and they'll tell you that serial numbers seldom help catch thieves -- dedicated crooks are usually smart enough to file off those digits so that stolen items can't be linked to a crime. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology might have just found a way to recover those numbers and stop criminals in their tracks, however. Their new technique uses electron microscopes to spot damaged crystal patterns in steel, revealing characters even when they've been polished into oblivion. Current recovery approaches (like acid etching or electrolytic polishing) only sometimes work, and frequently provide faint clues at best -- the microscope produces clear evidence that you could use to convict someone in court.
Smartphone 'kill switches' are reducing thefts in big cities
See that shiny flagship phone dangling from the stranger's back pocket? You should think twice about trying to grab it, not only because it's a terrible thing to do, but also because it probably won't do you any good. By the time you've hot-footed it to the pawn shop to hawk your ill-gotten wares, it's increasingly likely that the phone will have been deactivated by a smartphone kill switch. The campaign, launched by San Francisco's George Gascón and Eric Schneiderman way back in 2013 appears to have been a success, helping to remove the perils of tweeting on dark city streets.
Chrome OS lets you lock lost or stolen computers
Losing a gadget sucks, but having to change all your passwords to make sure no thief gets to your bank accounts is much worse for some people. That's why it's awesome that Chrome OS devices can now be locked when stolen or lost -- if they're Enterprise/Business or Education computers, that is. Google has introduced the feature as an update to the admin console, and according to Google employee François Beaufort, there's no way to do it for personal devices yet. That's unfortunate, but seeing as Chromebooks are doing especially well in the education sector, we're not entirely surprised. Those who do use a school/work-issued Chromebook only have to ask their IT admin to lock it remotely from the web-based control system. After that, people who switch the device on will only see a lock screen with the company's or school's address and phone number, in an attempt to guilt them into finding the rightful owner.
London has a real problem with thieves targeting keyless cars
If you own a new car, there's a good chance that it features some form of keyless security. Whether it helps unlock your car or lets you start it with the push of a button, it makes driving all that bit easier. That's unless it's the reason your car gets stolen. Police forces all over the UK are reporting a rise in keyless car thefts, but a new report released by the Metropolitan Police today suggests that it now accounts for over a quarter of all vehicle thefts across London.
British thieves stole DVDs from a supermarket by mailing them home
Before we start, we know that crime is wrong and that theft is a serious issue. That said, the lengths some people will go to steal a few DVDs is pretty entertaining. Thieves at a Walmart-owned ASDA supermarket in Cheshire, England managed to evade security after they began packing movies and other stolen goods into envelopes. Instead of walking out with the goods, where they'd be instantly apprehended, they came up with the clever idea to send the packages to themselves using the in-store Post Office. Apparently no one told them DVDs were dead.
Chinese authorities arrest thieves who dug hole into Beijing warehouse and stole 240 iPhone 6 units
There is no shortage of stories involving enterprising and boneheaded criminals coming up with all sorts of schemes to steal valuable Apple merchandise. From low-rent smash and grabs to Mission Impossible style heists involving thieves rappeling down into a Best Buy from a hole cut in the ceiling, the high resale value of most Apple products makes the company an appealing target. The most recent tale of Apple crime lore comes out of China, where a trio of men took it upon themselves last month to dig a tunnel into a Beijing warehouse whereupon they stole 240 iPhone 6 handsets. Xinhuanet reports: Beijing police said Wednesday that they had detained three men suspected of stealing 240 iPhone 6 handsets, valued at about 1.4 million yuan (228,496 U.S. dollars), from a Beijing warehouse. Police said the three men broke into the facility between Dec. 12 and 13 via a 50-cm hole dug out of the wall. One suspect surnamed Chang used to work as a driver for the logistics company that owned the warehouse and was familiar with the site. They later sold the gadgets and spent most of the money on cars, gold, and gambling. The report adds that the suspects were apprehended by tracking down the serial numbers of the stolen devices.
Thieves swipe over 1 million smartphones in the US each year
If you suspected that smartphone theft was becoming an epidemic in the US... well, you're right. The FCC has published findings which show that Americans report well over 1 million smartphone thefts to the police each year. That's not as high as unofficial estimates (Consumer Reports pegged 2013 thefts at 3.1 million), but it still means that "at least" a tenth of all known robberies in the US involve a phone. Also, that figure may be conservative -- many people don't report stolen phones in the first place.
Smart light bulb fools burglars by pretending you're at home
There's no shortage of smart light bulbs that will save energy or set a special mood, but they don't usually do much for when you're away from home. What if you want to trick thieves into thinking you're still around? BeON Home might have tackled that problem with its new Burglar Deterrent. The lighting doesn't just come on for set intervals -- it learns your habits to make it look like you're at home, and it'll even listen for your doorbell to turn on the lights and spook would-be intruders. Each bulb has its own backup power, too, and they'll react to your smoke detector's sounds to light the way out during a fire.
It's just this easy to steal from the Apple Store (video)
Late last week, ex-NBA player Rex Chapman was picked up by Scottsdale, Arizona police on felony charges of theft and trafficking in stolen property. According to the police, that's because Chapman made off from the local Apple Store with over $14,000 worth of gear over several visits occurring in the last few months. As you can see in the raw security video footage of some nine visits released by the police today, he would browse around, pick up an item (headphones, although from the video we can't tell if they're Beats), pretend to check it out with Apple's EasyPay app and put it in a white Apple sales bag. Finally, all he had to do was walk out before selling the goods at a pawnshop.
iPod touch stolen, used by war vet for prosthetic hand control
The opinion people have about thieves in general is pretty low, but a thief who broke into the truck of 27-year-old Afghanistan war vet Staff Sgt. Ben Eberle deserves loathing of a special kind. The thief took an iPod touch especially configured with an app called i-limb, used to control a prosthetic hand like the one seen above that was worn by Eberle. Eberle lost both legs and his right hand in a bomb blast three years ago, and has been using the prosthetic with the help of i-limb and the iPod touch. Using the pinky on the prosthetic hand to manipulate the app, Eberle can adjust the hand in an amazing number of ways. The hand and the app -- and the iPod touch -- all work together as a unit. While the iPod touch is only worth about US$240, San Antonio, TX police say that the thief could be charged with felony theft between $20,000 and $100,000. That's because the prosthetic hand is essentially worthless without the iPod touch and will have to be replaced at a cost of about $75,000. The iPod touch has a special logo on the back of it from the manufacturer, Touch Bionics. San Antonio Crime Stoppers is offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to an arrest of the thief, so if a reader happens to see the unique iPod touch, they can call 210-224-7867 with a tip and possibly help a vet recover some of his dexterity.
