Stolen iPhone found using suspect's photos

Way Way toooooooooo funny....


A woman whose iPhone was stolen during a Disney cruise trip tracked down the alleged thief after he inadvertently sent her photos he had taken on it, The Telegraph reports.

Apparently, the suspect didn't realize that the pictures he was taking with the phone would automatically upload to the owner's iCloud account, which allows data to be stored remotely on a computer.


You can read the real life scenario as it was and is currently unfolding within the facebook timeline of the theif and how he was arrested....

www.facebook.com...


article:
Read more: www.azcentral.com...

reply to post by cerebralassassins



my iphone4 was stolen a month ago. Luckily he was caught by the shop camera. I sent it to the police.
I'm wondering, tho icloud is possibly very helpful on catching the thief, but if it's automatically upload pictures, would that be a security threat on privacy?

Sort of like this!

www.dailymail.co.uk...




Concerns over security are valid though. Assumptions to be made here include:

- The software allowing remote-monitoring by the victim must have been pre-installed (by the Victim).
- Such software would be configured to be accessible by the Victim, via their credentials.
- Such software would most likely be using additional infrastructure to process and route the Victim MacBook data.

From this, I'll segway into:

- If your # gets stolen, and no software like this is installed on your i[whatever]/laptop, then it is gone my friend.
- Aquisition of Victim's security credentials by any means results in unprecidented access to the software's features.
- Internet security is a myth. With enough traffic back and forth, wired or wireless, there is no such thing as an impossible encryption to crack (infeasable, yes, but the exponential rate of technology adaption and expansion...).

Encryption/Decryption is a two-way function; every encryption has exactly one 'correct' decryption (duh). What is important is the transferral of initial private values, such as a user's password they are setting, the private values used to encrypt secure transmission between a client and a host initially, etc...

All that aside, it truely baffles me what some people are comfortable doing/having on digital machines and media. The question is not 'how will my data be accessed', but really, 'who will have use for my information when it is accesed?'.

P+L
- 4th year Software Engineering Undergraduate who has just completed a robust course on Computer and Nework Security

Originally posted by Cordyceps
reply to post by cerebralassassins

 

my iphone4 was stolen a month ago. Luckily he was caught by the shop camera. I sent it to the police.
I'm wondering, tho icloud is possibly very helpful on catching the thief, but if it's automatically upload pictures, would that be a security threat on privacy?

Well you have an option of turning icloud on or off.

However, if he was a bit clever he would have turned the icloud off on the phone. Oh well, that's why they're called dumb criminals!

reply to post by Cordyceps


Sure. As per my previous post, if indeed all the information being sent from the stolen device to it's owner IS travelling through and via some 'application host' server, then by all means that data will be present on that server.

Internet traffic is not like the conventional world - if I send you an envolope via snail-mail, and someone wanted to steal that envelope - then they could! But, there would be one envelope; you'd never get it, and someone would have it.
In the interwebs (read: Your Network of Computers and stuff, connected with your Service Provider's Network, connected with another Service Provider's Network, connected with an even bigger Network, connected with my Service Provider's network, connected to my LAN...) things are different. A message you send me (broken into one or more 'packets' of information) skips and hops through cables, and routers, until it reaches its destination. Along the way, it will be recieved, read (or at least, the address will be read), and forwarded until it hits your computer [SIMPLIFIED!]. Along the way, anything with a brain in the computer world can read that packet[s]'s information, before sending it. Anyone could even alter that/those packet[s], before sending them onto you. They can replicate the packets, and send them on to you.

What is to be said from this is yes, of course privacy is a concern! But, if you feel comporfable with entrusting some company to provide a service in which only you as the authorised owner of a compuer/device can operate, by means of authentication with probably an 8-character password (not hard to crack), and maybe a unique Hardware Address of your device (not hard for anyone to obtain), and have all of the comminications between your personal computer and you be flung all over the world, then go for it

Iphones are awesome because of this type of features, the icloud stuff even if lost everything on there is recoverable...

plus ive used the find my iPhone app to locate my lost phone in my house.

An uplifting post. I avoid anything made by Apple, but that was nice. Child slavery is not my cup of tea.