So it would seem there's at least one Go-Gang currently operating in London. Frankly, I'm not surprised that someone's decided to use motorcycles for a smash-and-grab, though I wouldn't have grabbed watches, what with the limited market and the serial numbers and all that. Better to get something like laptops or ipods - much easier to fence. So, is this the new thing in low-end robbery?

Thanks. Now I'll go to sleep with that song in my head.

You're welcome.

You know, the various characters on Excitable Boy would make an interesting team. A Werewolf, a Headless Thompson Gunner, and Whoever it is sending for Lawyers, Guns, and Money. Sounds like a PhysAd, a Gunbunny, and a Face to me.

A luxury watch is a worth far more per weight and volumes than an i-something or laptop - and those have serial numbers too. I also imagine there's more than enough of them trickling through burglaries and the like that fences know how to deal with them. Of course a big pile is harder to deal with, but since a Cartier watch isn't somehtign that lose value quickly 'unlike a laptop or smartphone), you can sit on them and sell them in a trickle. Or just move the lot to someplace where the buyers are connected and the cops will stay well clear of them (Africa and the middle East are rife with such opportunities).

A luxury watch is worth far more, yes, but is much less common than an i-something or laptop - the police can't stop every person they see with an ipod or laptop to check the serial number, but they can with a particular type of luxury watch. I suppose that, if there are plenty coming through burglaries then it might not be that big an issue, and moving them down to Africa or the Middle East could work, if you've got a fence or partner that can smuggle them out for you. But the longer you sit on them the worse your chances are for getting away clean.

The laptops and I-things are basically worth somethting like 500-1500€ apiece (retail price) - a quick peek at Cartier's web site has 3500€ for an entry model, with high-end ones in the 30 000€ range. You'd need to haul a whole carloard of i-things and laptops to get what a fanny pack of luxury wtaches would bring.

Since the action itself was a high visibility one that's going to draw a lot of media attention and olice interest, the high profile of the stolen items won't make things much worse in that regard - so it makes sense to go for the high end items rather than bothering with bulkier electronics.

I recall reading about a year ago that high end fashion shops were getting frequently targeted - pretty obvious when you consider those handbags can go for $3,000+, are pretty light and not easily traced.

Only problem is that nicking handbags can't be good for your street cred.

If you're moving enough cred by nicking handbags, I think it might have the opposite effect. Refuge in audacity and all that.

I'm surprised the fashion houses aren't putting RFIDs in everything, though, since you can wreck an RFID chip by bashing it with a hammer, I don't know how effective that would be, in the long run.

"Bagman" Jimmy never did a bagman job in his life, he got his nickname another way.

Modern electronics have all sorts of other issues.

For example: The registry for mobile phones (not up and running yet but coming soon), the fact that if those phones power on they can be tracked via gps. And its the same thing with those laptops. They have a few little features that call home, not currently used by police to track them (generally), but I promise you that the manufacture, OS vendor, support vendor could all work with law enforcement if they so choose to track you via the stolen MAC address to your ISP. I also hear that some laptops are coming with a loss prevention software that will call a 3rd party company to track and report the computers location.

Watches and jewelry are a lot easier to fence when you consider (if it is a professional job) they will be sent over seas to be sold in less scrupulous jewelry stores. They are after all the real deal and will be sold as such with the added benefit of not paying any sort of tax on the item and buying it for 20% of the value. Plus if it is an inside job the retailer would get the insurance and have the contacts to sell the "stolen" merchandise.

Is it the SIM chip that is tracked, or is there another element built into the phone?

And what is there to prevent a savvy hacker from convincing the phone or laptop that it isn't the one they're looking for? It must be easier to change software, or even hardware, on a stolen electronic device than it is to change the serial number on a fancy watch. Jewelry without serial numbers (and without sufficient uniqueness) would probably be the best of the lot though. That you can fence easily enough in the seedier parts of London, Liverpool, Bristol, or wherever, let alone smuggling it overseas.

I think the SIM chip is what identifies the phone to the network. So if you removed the SIM I don't think would track it as "that" phone. But are you going to buy phones without a SIM is a retailer going to take a couple of hundred phones without them? You can sell them off in smaller lots to the black market for use by other criminals but its hardly a big score. They buy those phones cheap and they don't need a fancy smart phone. Besides they are going to toss it after they use it a short time. Of course my info is several years old now, I'm not sure they use the same scheme. Your local electronics store operator can probably tell you all about it.

You can spoof your MAC address on a computer with software. You can replace it by switching the NIC assuming that's something you can do easily, some laptops not very easy to do. But even if you can replace it that takes people with extra time and specialized skills which add overhead to your operation. This also means you have to hold onto those computers longer which you certainly don't want to do. Spoofing the MAC address means that you are running software on that computer and anyone who uses it will have to do the same. I personally don't buy back alley goods but if I did I sure as hell would format the drive before I used it. After all I bought it from a criminal and how do I know what sort of bugs are crawling all over it?

Of course you are right. There are all levels of criminal enterprise and not all criminals want or can get top dollar. Sometimes crimes are no more planned then: lets steal a few bikes, do a smash and grab, then find someone to sell the loot to. Just like in SR some groups are smash and grab shoot'em up and other groups center around never being seen or at least never drawing a gun.

Actually both the SIM and the phone identify themselves to the network. In theory, the phone's IMEI can't be changed...

Macintosh computers are stupid easy to swap your MAC addresses on. Wifi anyways. Every single one of them uses a separate card that the antennae plug into. It takes me, Apple certified blah blah blah been fixing Macs for three or so years now, maybe twenty minutes or so to change the card out on the models with an optical drive (they hide them in the hinge cover) and about five minutes in all the others. Somewhat more tricky is getting admin access to the computer when it has an EFI password (password before the system even boots) but even that is easy to bypass since Apple has the firm, and in my experience correct, opinion that their users are morons that can't remember passwords to save their lives.

Not to diss any Apple users on DS. But if you dealt with the people I do every day, you'd also develop a certain contempt for the typical Apple user.

No, not really. Users somehow do not appreciate sniffing in their private affairs, so any hypothetical tracking mechanism would have to be turned off before delivery to the end customer. And if the student jobbing at the checkout can turn it off everybody can, meaning the whole system would be pretty useless.


The MAC address is only visible to the next "hop" on the network, which for 90% of the internet population means their router. And even if the ISP could see your MAC, it is neither unique nor fixed and as such a far cry from probable cause.

Phones on the other hand can be identified and tracked by their IEMI (and contrary to political claims, mobile tracking is not just used to combat pedophile nazi terrorists), but most cell providers simply blacklist the IEMIs of stolen handsets. The legal checks against mass eavesdropping are laughable but they still exist, so blacklisting stolen devices generates less red tape and is therefore better for the bottom line.

Though I do not think local law enforcement here in the states has the resources to bother doing this for missing laptops. The retailer has the OS key tied to their hardware. So in the case of a large robbery they could work with the manufacturer of the OS. So when the OS connects for its initial update they collect all sorts of computer data as well as the IP. The IP can be tracked to the ISP and the ISP can tell you which account was assigned an IP at any time. Getting these records is time consuming and does deal with protections on personal information, but the current laws do allow for this to be done. I am not saying it is done only that in the case of a news worthy criminal smash and grab that it could be done.

I thought the MAC address were able to be read from further away but I was working on a corporate network and we did asset management which included getting MAC addresses, but quick research on the internet shows that you are right this was accomplished with asset management software installed on those machines.

At least in case of Windows Vista and upwards, the preinstalled OEM copy is only bound to a certain model of the motherboard (more precisely, it looks for a key file in the ACPI tables). If an OEM copy was really bound to an individual machine, what would all the pirates do?

PS: I also don't think (or rather hope) any big software company has their updater send the actual product key for authentication, that's why we keep the math guys around...

I think my father once got an infinite-use Vista key from a laptop that came with it pre-installed.

But that is Vista... Does anyone really care about that one?

There are indeed different classes of OEM Windows besides the "BIOS bound" variety (there's a fancy three-letter term for it but I'm too lazy to google it) which still let the user type in a key.

And is anyone surprised that Vista even screwed up the activation?

What happens when they meet the Boy himself? I'm thinking he's Toxic Infected of some sort.

Johnny Starts Up the Band and we Accidentally make the Boy Like a Martyr, of course.

That took Genius.