Category: Protecting Yourself and Others

I just say this post on Says Uncle. As we all know if you fly with guns you have to put them in checked luggage. This in essence is meant to prevent somebody from coming aboard with a gun and either hijacking the plan or shooting it up. The checked baggage is checked by humans whom are supposed to be airport employees whom you can trust.

Well once again live shows a wrench in the best laid plans as three baggage handlers have been arrested for theft. They were busted as a result of a string operation which was set in place when a retired police officer’s gun was stolen after being checked in at the airport.

This should present a couple major ideas. First and foremost never use those TSA approved locks. These locks for those who do not know are ones which can be opened by any TSA officer should they need to look at an item contained in the locked case. These locks are flimsy and not secure to begin with but knowing anybody with a specific key can open your luggage should worry you. If you don’t have a TSA approved key you will be called to the desk to open the locked container should they need to look at it. This is ideal since you’ll be there to open the case and stand there while they look at it. This means you see everything from the case being opened to the case being closed again so nothing should go missing.

The second thing to note is you should have a plan should your container be stolen. If you have a good case with a good lock it will take the thief some time to open it, in fact they probably won’t get to it before the end of the day when they can get the case home. This means you should be able to put a tracking device inside of the case and it probably won’t be taken out until the thief gets the case back home. The linked tracking device has an option to send SMS texts to you based on outlined criteria. This means you could setup criteria that once the case leaves the airport you get an SMS with it’s location and get periodic updates from then on. This would allow you to track the case and you will know if it’s heading in the right direction. Further should the case be stolen you can tell the police where it went and where is potentially is. Of course the device I linked to is pricey but if you have one or two custom guns in there isn’t not really that expensive considering the cost of losing the guns.

This is a rather funny but also scary story. An unknown criminal entity setup a fake ATM at a hotel. The fake ATM was meant to steal credit card numbers and provide them to the controlling entity. Well the people who set it up probably didn’t realize that Defcon, an event focusing on security, was going to be in town.

Needless to say a place flooded with security experts meant somebody took note that the ATM didn’t look quite right. After a short investigation they discovered the machine was in fact fraudulent and contacted the police whom took it away.

The scary part here is realizing how sophisticated criminals are becoming. Who would suspect a fake ATM machine? But all that is needed is to create a casing that looks like an ATM and slap a computer with a card scanner in it and you have an instant way of harvesting credit card numbers. For bonus points you can put in a cellular data card tied to a stolen account and have the computer inside the machine transfer the credit card numbers to a compromised computer which in turn will transmit them to the controlling entity.

Of course creating a fully functional fake ATM isn’t necessary. A simple card reading device can be overlaid on an authentic ATM. When you insert your card the overlay will read the card number and then feed it into the ATM. At that point you have no idea your credit card number was recorded by an entity besides the ATM. After a period of time the thief can retrieve the overlay and obtain the recorded credit card numbers. Furthermore to prevent having to physically retrieve the overlay the thief could setup some kind of wireless transmitter inside the overlay which would allow the numbers to be retrieved from a distance.

People trust ATMs because they don’t realize people can make fake imitations which look real. This seems like a job that would be too expensive and sophisticated for a generic criminal and hence nobody worries about it. This story should remind everybody that being paranoid isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

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