Daily reminder to not be complacent and to not be stupid - laptop stolen from truck
Posted by Nexzus_@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 37 comments
I make it a rule to not victim blame, but yeah, this one is on me.
Laptop on front passenger seat not in bag, windows down. Pull into a gas station, closest pump to store, right at the front. ("yeah, no one would be that brazen")
Go inside to use the facilities, and to pay for some gas.
Pump the gas, enter truck, look over to the seat; yeah, that doesn't seem right. Take a few more seconds to look at the open window, look down at the seat again, and slowly close my eyes and bow my head in shame.
Go back inside, talk to clerk about camera setups, and recordings, get the details about how to request it. (Their website even has a dedicated option for requesting a recording)
Go back to truck, start driving, make the dreaded call to my supervisor about his stupid employee. He starts the process of getting it remotely wiped.
Call the non-emergency line of the jurisdictional police department and make a file.
I know this is just a part of business and happens all the time, but it still sucks. We all sign those forms and watch the training about keeping company property, especially our laptops, safe. And 99 times out of 100, we're fine. A would-be thief left the area 5 minutes before. It's slightly too cold, so we don't roll our windows down. That extra afternoon drink not consumed so our bladder is fine and we don't need to go inside. We don't think about it (making sure that laptop is secure) because we just wanna get back on the road and go home and our actions have worked so far.
The laptop is encrypted, and will be wiped when it's able to phone home. My desktop and Documents are synced to One Drive. I never turned on Chrome bookmarks sync so those are gone. Anything in c:\temp should be treated as exactly that.
I'll go in today and get one of the older surplus units. And in a couple days I'll be subject of an anonymous reminder email sent to everyone about the importance of keeping your laptop safe.
Just.. don't be complacent and be smarter than me. We're fine until we're not.
E8zPQrX7rwkd@reddit
The first job I had in IT, there was a rule regarding transporting laptops in cars:
At least twice a year, we would have an unannounced ISO 27000 audit and it would inevitably start with an auditor arriving early, sitting a car in our car park, watching people get out of their cars, and noting down anyone that didn't remove their bag from their boot.
Anyone they noted down received a formal warning in their HR file.
moldyjellybean@reddit
I’ll get downvoted but this is beyond reckless. I treat my stuff with care but company stuff that’s not mine I treat with even more care.
There probably 4+ mistakes here. At least slide under the seat, not have windows down, lock car etc . That’s bare minimum. GL but bitlocker computrace etc have been compromised before.
Crazy thing is I’ve seen people do it with dogs, kids in the car and one a year there’s a story about it
marklein@reddit
I reserve "beyond reckless" for loss of life. This is merely reckless IMO.
Working46168@reddit
yea it is a company laptop ffs. also a doorstop sometimes.
moldyjellybean@reddit
It's not the laptop it's company data and security that is the issue.
Imagine telling employees to secure their devices when you leave it on a seat, with the door unlock, windows down. Just a dumb look
I'm glad I don't listen to sysadmins like you who told me AMD was no good 10 years ago even I when I showed them the numbers when I bought it for $1.80 and now it's $500 or btc was worthless. Clueless, you guys must be cybersecurity
https://np.reddit.com/r/AMD_Stock/comments/9v1n6f/amazon_web_services_aws_pricing_amd_vs_intel/e994dka/
finallygrownup@reddit
Always good to grow and learn a lesson. I learned it 20+ years ago at the mall. I had used worthless brake pads I had put back in the original box and tossed in the bed of my Ford Ranger. They were of course snagged. Lesson learned, dont leave anything that can be perceived as having any worth visible.
Bright_Arm8782@reddit
OTOH you also have a means of disposing of things you no longer want.
punkwalrus@reddit
I used this in high school: we had people would pickpocket out of back pockets, and I got rid of a lot of trash that way by just folding it neatly.
Valdaraak@reddit
These days I just don't leave anything visible. You never know what some doofus is willing to break into a car for.
Frothyleet@reddit
Counterpoint, leave things visibile that make you look like a low value target. Empty tobacco wrappers, maybe something vaguely looking like a crack pipe, lots of fast food wrappers, and at least one thing that is indiscernable from roadkill
CharcoalGreyWolf@reddit
A crack pipe means your vehicle might have crack in it. Someone will go looking
Frothyleet@reddit
omg mr nit picker you get what I'm saying
Unable-Entrance3110@reddit
Yeah, I am sort of religious about it. I am a paranoid person, so if I absolutely have to leave something in the car, I make sure it's not visible from any external vantage point and all the doors are locked.
finallygrownup@reddit
Yep, the (rare) work trips to another office have everything in the trunk.
punkwalrus@reddit
One of my friends, years ago, got his laptop stolen from his house. While he was out shopping, burglars broke into his garage, kicked in the door to the house, and pretty much did a smash and grab. DGAF, did gang signs in front of the security cameras. The company laptop was stolen from where it hung on the bannister in the laptop bag.
He was a university professor, and he had a shit ton of student records as well as proprietary university info, including access, emails, and so on. Back then, there wasn't much to be done but report his laptop was stolen, and he got a new one. Most of the data was unrecoverable. He had an external drive for backups, but where was it? In the laptop bag. The only saving grace was that most of his lesson plan and notes were recoverable from the university email system, a ton of old handouts, and other sources. But it took him a summer to reconstruct his laptop "workspace."
As with others, a crime of opportunity. Not sure if the laptop was locked down, but this was before things like Bitlocker, and I think it was a Mac laptop anyway. Probably fenced or pawned.
It can happen to the best of us.
mschuster91@reddit
At that point it's time to hold the cops and the pump owners liable as well. When theft becomes such a large issue that they have a dedicated section on their website how victims can ask for camera recording, it's time to hire some private security guard or station a patrol car there.
Frothyleet@reddit
As an FYI, cops have absolutely no liability for being bad at their jobs (except to the extent that explicit civil rights violations count as "bad at your job", and even that is limited). See Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales
mschuster91@reddit
That's on local authorities to solve as well. WTF do they even have cops for when crime can go rampant in the open? And yes that includes cities with open-street fencing rings as well that enable organized theft.
Frothyleet@reddit
The police exist to enforce power structures that permit wealthy, embedded interests to continue their control over socioeconomic policies. Most modern policing in the US can be traced back to 19th century organized slave-catching patrols.
Nexzus_@reddit (OP)
In this case, the form also asks for a transaction dollar amount. Non-mandatory field, but I think it's more intended for card fraud.
tblancher@reddit
What makes you think that these surveillance systems aren't already CYA from an insurance standpoint, if not legal.
OkEmployment4437@reddit
I'd treat the laptop part as mostly contained if BitLocker was on and the wipe lands, but the follow-up I'd care about today is identity state. If that box had active browser sessions, PRT/device trust, VPN tokens, or cached creds, I'd force sign-outs, revoke refresh tokens, disable or re-register the device if needed, and reset anything local that could still buy access. Hardware is annoying, session residue is the bit that turns a stupid theft into an actual incident.
Fallingdamage@reddit
anything important is never on my laptop, its a VPN hop away to another secure encrypted appliance. I would just lockout my email so SSO/2FA wont work to connect to that appliance and make sure my reddit account sessions are logged out. Thank god they allow you to do that.
humboldtborn@reddit
I had a $4k new honeywell thor vm3 in my truck. Accesories put the total value around $5500. I didnt lock my door, which I usually do. I came out the next morning to find it all gone.
civiljourney@reddit
At least you owned the situation. That's better than a lot of people.
gabacus_39@reddit
Why do people type out things like they're talking surrounded by some enthralled crowd of people? I always get AI vibes from that sort of shit.
karlsmission@reddit
I put one of those bins that goes under the rear seat of my truck, and my bag goes in there. It's inconvenient, but unless you open the rear door, you can't even see it's there, and to open the rear door, because it's an extended cab, you have to open the front doors fully. I used to work somewhere on a night shift where my vehicle was broken into regularly, and so I learned to just leave my doors unlocked and some change and gum in the center console AND NOTHING ELSE EVER, the change and gum got stolen often, but my car was otherwise left alone.
HoosierLarry@reddit
I’ve seen reports of phones snatched out of people hands on the subway so I’m not leaving a laptop out. I treat my tech like a fistful of dollars.
axonxorz@reddit
Excellent rule, so many people struggle with it.
I can understand why a boss or super will be upset, but if you're lashing out at the person who messed up, in my opinion, you're a small person who thinks that putting the person down will make you feel better. That's a lie. You're mad because you have to spend money to replace hardware, man-hours for reconfiguration. Good job, you made a person who already (very likely) feels bad about it (and has also lost work) worse, you damage your working relationship. And at the end of all that, the source of your anger, the dollars the man-hours still need to be spent.
Similarly, if someone is losing things often, maybe an HR issue, addressing that level of carelessness with anger won't solve anything either.
Klutzy_Possibility54@reddit
Also, sometimes these things do just happen and as OP found, it can happen to anyone. It's always crazy to me how many people on /r/sysadmin think that when an employee's laptop gets stolen, they deserve to be punished for not defending their company's property with their life. A little understanding goes a long way, if nothing else it's very fortunate that it was just a theft of opportunity and nobody got hurt.
adisor19@reddit
Yeah if it’s bitlocker encrypted.. I got some baaad news for ya.
Nexzus_@reddit (OP)
Yeah, YellowKey. Really just hope the thieves just wanna pawn it for drug or booze money.
GoogleDrummer@reddit
It was a theft of opportunity, not corporate espionage; you're alright.
BuffaloRedshark@reddit
That's sort of impressive, but also makes me wonder if it's due to a lot of crime in the area
Comfortable-Site8626@reddit
honestly the response was textbook. encryption on, remote wipe queued, police report filed, camera footage requested. the laptop was gone but the incident was contained. that's the part that actually matters.
Xfgjwpkqmx@reddit
Commiserations. It's never a fun position to be in.
The company I work for is slowly working towards allowing a degree of BYOD because new laptops will end up being the cheapest ones we can get with all work access essentially being a client to server remote session over the intertubes.
No more company data on the local drive whatsoever and we literally won't care about stolen laptops anymore, other than remotely bricking it just because it would be fun to do so.