theft
Latest
Artist plagiarizes Guild Wars 2, World of Warcraft illustrators
If you're going to steal, steal big -- or so Romanian artist Iani Papadopol thought. Papadopol put on an exhibit called "UpDate 3D loading" featuring fantastic landscapes and scenery. The only problem? Instead of painting them himself, he ripped off several well-known illustrators, including ArenaNet's Daniel Dociu and Blizzard's Mathias Verhasselt, claiming the pieces as his own. The fraud was discovered by online fans and local artists after the exhibit was broadcast on TV. Papadopol's works were found to be stunningly similar -- in fact, identical -- to those of famous video game illustrators. Papadopol attempted to sell the prints before he was caught. There's no word yet whether charges will be filed. "I found out from my friends," Dociu, a fellow Romanian, said on a news channel. "I recognized four pieces of my work immediately. What upsets me is that he's also Romanian with an artistic background. I will not take legal action if he admits what he did." Papadopol's father, the acclaimed artist Constantin Papadopol, says that this is a misunderstanding. In any case, let this be the lesson to the next lazy art thief: It's perhaps best not to rip off the guy whose work was on the cover of National Geographic.
US Court: Code isn't property, therefore it can't be stolen
New York's Second Circuit Court of Appeals has decided that computer code cannot be stolen after acquitting former Goldman Sachs programmer Sergey Aleynikov. He'd been charged with property theft and economic espionage which carried an eight year prison sentence, but left court a free man after serving just a year of his term. The case hinged upon the definition of both property and economic espionage, and the court found that code, being an intangible, couldn't be property that's capable of being stolen within the definition of the statute -- affirming a state of affairs that's been in place since the British case of Oxford v Moss from 1979. Just as a warning: the Judges advised Congress to amend the relevant legislation in order to prevent thefts of this nature in the future, so we'd hold back on any big data-heists you've got planned.
RuneScape: Seventh anniversary retrospective
Although RuneScape officially launched in 2001, today marks the seventh anniversary of the end of the RuneScape 2 beta. This was a complete gameplay and graphics overhaul that signaled the rebirth of the game, and it's a date well worth celebrating. The past year has been filled with massive content updates that added clan support, upgradeable clan citadels, a new website, and countless new quests. Player-made battlefields put game design in the hands of players, who have used the system to produce ton of content. Understandably, most people will likely remember this year for one thing: This was the year that RuneScape beat the bots. Following the momentous Bot Nuking Day, players logged in to find a distinctly emptier world but one filled with real people. RuneFest 2011 was a success, with presentations from the game's developers and a special focus on breaking the bots. This year also saw the interesting story that the Dutch Supreme Court ruling that stealing RuneScape items is the same as theft of real life goods. In this anniversary retrospective, I look back at some of RuneScape's top news stories and game additions of the year.
Apple staffer reportedly stole $16K worth of iPhones
When I worked in retail, I quickly learned all about "loss prevention," which is the program that most retailers undertake to try and (you guessed it) prevent loss or theft of product at whatever store they're running. Customer theft is obviously an issue anywhere you have merchandise sitting out in public, but an even bigger issue, surprisingly, is employee theft. And Apple isn't immune: Recently, an employee allegedly stole up to 25 phones at an Apple Store in Charlotte, North Carolina. The phones were taken out of a back room over about a month and a half in December and January, with the employee apparently just taking them out of the store. The total value of the property stolen was $16,000. The article in the local paper doesn't say if the police have found the thief yet, though presumably Apple would have all of their information. (The employee in question "had access to the Genius room," but may or may not have been a Genius Bar team member.) At the retail stores I worked at (GameStop and then Borders for a while), employees would have to go through "bag checks" every day, to make sure they weren't walking out of the store with product. I don't know about Apple's policies specifically (though I'll bet employees could fill us in on the comments below), but whatever measures were in place, it appears this employee was able to get around them. [via MacRumors]
FCC thinks ISPs should do a better job preventing fraud, theft
Internet fraud and theft are major problems, there seems to be little doubt about that -- according to FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, some 8.4 million credit card numbers are stolen every year. The question, then, is who should be addressing the issue. Genachowski this week called for "smart, practical, voluntary solutions," asking internet service providers to put more effort into helping prevent data theft, hacks and other issues, or risk having "consumers lose trust in the internet," thereby "suppress[ing] broadband adoption and online commerce and communication." The chairman asked ISPs to help avoid hijacking through more efficient traffic routes and to instate DNSSEC to help weed out fraudulent sites.
Google Wallet gets prepaid security fix, but 'brute-force' issue still hangs in the air
Google says it's fixed a Wallet security flaw that potentially allowed a phone thief to spend a user's prepaid balance. The ability to provision new prepaid cards had been suspended pending the update, but has now been restored. Things aren't quite back to normal in the Big G's world of mobile money, however. Users still find themselves caught between two competing arguments over an entirely different vulnerability, which involves a 'brute-force' attack on rooted devices. Google insists that this isn't a major concern, so long as Wallet users refrain from rooting, and that the system still "offers advantages over the plastic cards and folded wallets in use today." On the other hand, the company that discovered this issue -- zvelo -- has come back at Google with an equally blunt response. It acknowledges that a handset must be rooted to be vulnerable, but crucially its researchers also say that a device doesn't have to be rooted before it's stolen. In other words, they allege that a savvy thief can potentially steal a phone and then root it themselves, and they won't be happy with Wallet until it requires longer PIN number. Whichever argument sways you, it's worth bearing in mind that there's no evidence that anyone has yet managed to exploit these weaknesses for criminal purposes.
Hacker spites Symantec, puts pcAnywhere's source code out in the open
Symantec said that folks running its pcAnywhere utility were at an "increased risk" when it revealed that the company had been hacked and its source codes pilfered, and advised customers to stop using pcAnywhere for the time being. Sage advice, as a hacker with the handle YamaTough -- who's affiliated with Anonymous -- helped do the deed and has now published the code for all the world to see. Apparently, the hacker and hackee had attempted to broker a deal for $50,000 to keep the code private, but neither side negotiated in good faith -- YamaTough always intended to release the code, and law enforcement was doing the talking for Symantec to catch him and his hacking cohorts. The good news is, Symantec has released several patches to protect pcAnywhere users going forward. As for the stolen code for Norton Antivirus, Internet Security and other Symantec software? Well, the company's expecting it to be disclosed, too, but because the code is from 2006, customers with current versions can rest easy.
Dutch Supreme Court declares RuneScape theft a real-world crime
Is stealing a virtual good deserving of a real-world criminal sentence? According to a recent ruling by the Dutch Supreme Court, the answer is "yes." The court recently upheld a ruling of a criminal case in which teens attacked another youth and forced him at knifepoint to relinquish his possessions in RuneScape, including an in-game amulet and knife. The incident happened in 2007, and a lower court convicted the two thieves in 2009. One of the defendants then appealed to the country's supreme court on the grounds that the stolen goods "were neither tangible nor material and, unlike for example electricity, had no economic value." However, the judges declared that these virtual items had value because they represented "time and energy invested" to acquire. The thieves were sentenced to 144 hours of community service.
Source code theft prompts Symantec to issue warning to customers
Security software publisher Symantec has confirmed it was the victim of a cyber attack, resulting in the theft and disclosure of product source code. Earlier this month, the online-collective Anonymous stated, via Twitter, that it possessed portions of the code in question and planned to release it in support of a class-action lawsuit filed by consumers -- the suit claims Symantec employed scare tactics to encourage users to purchase its wares. Via its website, the company affirmed Anonymous' claims, citing a source code heist dating back to 2006. The post goes on to suggest that users running Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, Norton Internet Security, Norton SystemWorks, Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0, or Symantec AntiVirus 10.2 apply the latest maintenance patches. If you have the company's pcAnywhere solution deployed, Symantec suggests only using it for "business critical purposes," as this software is "at increased risk." Those looking to stay up-to-date on the breach and what Symantec is doing to ameliorate its effects can get the blow-by-blow from the source link below.
NimbleBit calls out Zynga clone of Tiny Tower
Zynga, which has made its fortune on Farmville, has released an app in Canada (not on the American App Store yet) called Dream Heights, which bears much more than a passing resemblance to Tiny Tower, a terrific and very successful freemium game from NimbleBit (the brothers-run company that we've posted about a few times before). By the looks of things, it seems that Zynga saw NimbleBit's success and decided to borrow most of the game's mechanics. NimbleBit is pretty genial about the whole thing, but co-founders David and Ian Marsh haven't been completely kind on their Twitter accounts. Both have called out Zynga and posted a big infographic that compares the two games and their extreme similarities. They've also needled Zynga, with 2700 more employees than NimbleBit's three person staff, for not making anything better than a pretty blatant clone of Tiny Tower. Other developers have jumped to NimbleBit's defense on Twitter. It's possible that Zynga may decide not to release Dream Heights due to the pressure from developers; more likely Zynga will release it, and the game will perform decently, but not nearly as well as Tiny Tower has done. I have asked NimbleBit about getting acquired before. The brothers seem like prime candidates for a larger company to come along and buy them out, and indeed Ian Marsh says during this whole affair that Zynga has offered to purchase NimbleBit and its games before. But as they told me, these guys aren't in it for the money. Certainly their games are very lucrative, but the Marsh brothers have said that they just like making great games on their own and will continue to do that for as long as they can. It's a shame that Zynga has so blatantly imitated the Marshes' hard work, but you know what they say about imitation and flattery.
Apple Store thieves arrested after robbery
Apple Stores continue to be a target for theft around the United States, apparently -- this time a robbery went down in Scottsdale, Arizona, where a trio of young thieves busted in the glass doors on an Apple Store, and tried to get away with $75,000 worth of Apple devices. The group robbed the store at around 2 AM on the second day of 2012 (possible Two-Face involvement?), but fortunately a taxi driver spotted the crime and started following the robbers away from the scene. Things apparently got scary: The robbers actually started firing guns on the taxi driver, who followed them anyway, and was able to make enough of an identification (along with security camera footage) that cops were able to arrest the three thieves. So everything turned out all right, aside from the broken windows on the front of the Apple Store. Apple Stores are obvious targets for thieves, not only because they're of course filled with expensive, resellable products, but also because the store designs often mean that getting in is just a window break away. But it's good to hear that quick thinking (and some heroic work by the taxi driver) in this case was able to prevent too much loss.
Find my iPad saves Christmas
Here's a nice story thanks to Apple's Find my iPad feature. A family in California had their Christmas gifts stolen last week, along with several other items in the home. Seemingly unrelatedly, another man had his iPad stolen soon after, and he called the police to report the theft. He was able to track his iPad via Apple's Find My iPad service, and when the cops went to the home where it was being tracked from, they not only found the stolen iPad and the thief, but the family's Christmas presents as well. According to the police report, the family had already purchased replacement presents, but that didn't make them any less happy to hear that the original gifts had been found. The iPad was also returned to its owner, making for a happy ending for everybody. Everybody except the thief, that is. He's currently in jail on a $20,000 bond and will presumably face trial for the theft. Serves him right.
Snobby robbers annoyed by Droids, prefer iPhones
Today's secret word is "techno-elitism" (actually, if you follow that link, you'll find the secret word is a bit more salacious). Whatever your personal views on Android vs. iPhone vs. BlackBerry may be, at least one particular subset of society has apparently made up its mind on the matter. According to NBC New York, two robbers in upper Manhattan are targeting Columbia University students and demanding they hand over their iPhones. Upon discovering that one victim had an Android-powered smartphone rather than an iPhone, they declined to take it and demanded cash instead. A third victim had a BlackBerry, which the robbers also refused to steal. "It's insulting they don't want my BlackBerry," said the victim, earning her a nomination for 2011's Weirdest Perspective of the Year. This isn't the first time New York-area robbers have shown a marked preference for Apple's products. Various news reports in the mid-2000s blamed the iPod for a rise in thefts and muggings, and for a while it seemed like wearing white earbuds was like wearing a sign that said, "Please rob me." More recently, the NYPD told the Daily News that at least 70% of the cellphones taken in city thefts or robberies are iPhones. [Yes, these aren't the Droids they're looking for. –Ed.] Apple products consistently retain a high resale value -- whether they're legitimately obtained or not -- and that plus high demand for the iPhone naturally makes it a tempting target for thieves. As for these two thieves' disdain for Android phones and BlackBerry handsets, I'll leave it to the rest of you to speculate just why they may take that stance. [via The Loop]
NerdHeist 2011: Razer Blade prototypes stolen from Razer R&D
After what we can only imagine was an exciting and Hollywood worthy laser-grid-circumnavigating vault heist, two experimental Blade prototypes have been stolen from a Razer research and development laboratory in the San Francisco bay area, according to a Facebook post made by Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan. It's unclear as to whether or not these were the only two prototypes, but it's safe to say that any loss like this is a significant one, and that the prototypes are worth far more than the $2,800 retail price originally quoted for the laptop. Tan is asking for anyone with information about the theft to send an email to cult at razerzone dot com. The Blade, revealed earlier this year at PAX, makes use of a proprietary user interface and LCD touchpad; trade secrets which Razer must desperately (and understandably) want to keep out of the hands of the competition. We're not saying this was corporate espionage, of course, but we are heavily implying that.%Gallery-131790%
IPhone 4 theft suspects plead no contest, get wrists slapped
The two men accused of taking a prototype iPhone 4 from a bar and shopping it around to various tech blogs instead of doing the decent thing and returning the phone to its owner -- which is theft no matter how you try to spin it -- have essentially received a slap on the wrist. CNET reports both suspects have received one year of probation, 40 hours of community service, and a US$250 fine -- a drop in the bucket compared to the amount they received in compensation from Gizmodo. The judge in the case noted that neither suspect had prior convictions, which led him to decline the district attorney's request that they serve jail time. So let this be a lesson to the rest of you: if you steal a prototype device from the world's most valuable company and sell it at a profit of several thousand dollars, you can expect some pretty hardcore consequences. Probation, 40 hours of picking up highway trash, and 250 bucks... harsh sentencing, man. Just brutal. I'm sure no one will risk that kind of punishment if Apple ever loses another prototype.
London's Covent Garden Apple Store hit by burglars
In what is the most high-profile Apple Store robbery to date, a gang of thugs carried out a smash-and-grab raid on London's Covent Garden Apple Store. The store, which opened fourteen months ago, is Apple's second flagship store. It was built in a remodeled 19th century building and features a glass roof over a courtyard that was originally designed for delivery of merchandise by horses. The Guardian reports that shortly before 1 AM a gang of seven masked thieves rode up to the Apple Store on mopeds and motorcycles and smashed one of the store's windows. They then proceeded to grab Apple devices including iPads, and then jumped back on their vehicles and sped away. Shortly after the burglary, police in the London neighborhood of Islington (about a 10 minute ride away from Covent Garden at that time of night) spotted one of the vehicles used in the raid and two men were arrested at the scene. Scotland Yard said that some stolen Apple devices were recovered from their possession. The police are asking anyone else who might have information about the burglary to contact the Metropolitan Police Service. [image credit: Rob Shoesmith]
iPhone, Android users concerned about security
According to a survey from the NPD group, iPhone and Android users have one thing in common - they are both concerned about the security of their mobile phones. About 40% of of iOS and Android users are concerned about credit card theft, mobile device hacking, and more. Though people are aware of potential threats to their mobile phone, only a handful do something about it. The survey reveals that 25% of smartphone owners and 35% of iPhone owners have no idea how to secure their handset. Those that are aware of mobile security solutions, 25% won't install a security product because the software is too expensive. This "ignorance is bliss" attitude may be sifficient for the time being as mobile security is in its infancy and real-world threats are minimal. As smartphones become a bigger target for hackers, the need for mobile security will likely increase to a critical level. [Via Ars Technica, Chart from NPD]
StayLocked prototype renders your stolen bike unusable, won't buy you another
If you can't ride your stolen bike, neither should anyone else. That's the basic premise behind StayLocked Bicycle -- a prototype that effectively self-destructs whenever someone tries to snatch it. The magic lies in the bike's integrated locking mechanism, which is built in to a pair of tubes extending from the back wheel to the seat. Riders can attach the swiveling lock to any fixed post, but if someone successfully breaks it, the bike's chain stays will no longer support his or her weight, rendering the prototype virtually useless, and the thief utterly embarrassed. Of course, this system won't deter criminals from stealing a cycle for its parts, and it's certainly not as ideal a solution as, say, actually getting your bike back. But at least you'd feel better knowing that whoever swiped your ride probably looked ridiculous while doing so.
Microsoft issues Xbox Live bans for 'Marketplace theft'
It's not uncommon for Microsoft to unleash the Xbox Live banhammer once every few months. Rounds of banning are generally conducted for typical reasons -- piracy, cheating and the like -- but this ban session is a little different. We've received several tips on the matter, and Microsoft has issued a statement on the Xbox.com forums saying that the console bans were the result of Xbox Live Marketplace "theft." The statement notes that the company "discovered users who illegitimately accessed Xbox LIVE Marketplace downloadable content," adding that "this access was intentional and not accidental, constituting a blatant violation of the Terms of Use for the service." The company won't provide specifics on the kind of theft that took place, though there are some likely culprits. For example, there are known methods for downloading Xbox Live content for free (that we won't be sharing here) and presumably Microsoft has gotten wise. If you'd like to keep your account intact, then maybe, you know, don't steal.
One family, two Find My iPhone adventures
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, an Australian family has recently gone through not one, but two adventures related to stolen iPhones. While on holiday at a Hilton in Fiji, the family's mother, Fiona Donohoe, had her iPhone ripped off by a hotel concierge. In a move worthy of a featured spot on Dumb Criminals, the theft was discovered and the iPhone recovered after the concierge accidentally synced all of his/her own contacts with Donohoe's MobileMe account. After that it was presumably simple to track down the thief, who has been fired from the Fiji Hilton and jailed for six months. Only two weeks later, 13-year-old Tahira Donohoe had her iPhone stolen while at school. She and her father used the Find My iPhone app on his iPad to track the thief's progress along a bus route for a while before deciding to give up the chase and let the police deal with it. They walked into a police station, set the iPad on the counter, and reported a theft in progress. Police caught up with the thief shortly thereafter, and when they were at first unable to find the stolen goods, they asked the Donohoes to ping the phone using Find My iPhone. Once the telltale sonar sound went off, police recovered the phone, arrested the 13-year-old thief after a brief chase, and brought everything in to the station to sort things out. The Donohoes did not press charges against the young thief. The Herald reports that the Donohoes had already replaced the iPhone stolen in Fiji before that phone was recovered, so they now have an extra iPhone. Hopefully they can hang on to all of them from now on. Find My iPhone is available for free from the App Store and does not require a paid MobileMe account if you have an iPhone 4, any iPad, or a fourth-generation iPod touch. Once iCloud launches, the service will presumably be free for all users on all devices. Find My iPhone is hands-down the first app that should be installed on new iOS devices and the first service you should enable.
