According to Greg Martin, he returned home to his flat in Ealing Broadway only to discover the apartment had been ransacked during the riots, with his Macbook stolen, along with a number of other personal effects.
Newswire reports suggest that Martin's flat was broken into after a thief used a scaffold pole to pry open the security bars on the basement window.
Fortunately, the ArcSight technical expert had installed Prey, an open source tracking application from Fork and, whilst his laptop was protected using a password and other security software, he – understandably – wanted to get the machine back.
Martin is quoted by today's Daily Telegraph as saying his entire career has been as a computer security person and that he takes the issue very seriously.
When he remote accessed his Macbook Pro, the thief's face came up on screen and, he told the paper, it was the most incredible feeling. “I went straight to my hotel room, put in the password for my laptop and just watched. I sat there and basically stalked him. I got the guy on a silver platter”, he said.
After logging the thief's online movements and the locating of the laptop, he contacted the police, who raided the suspect's flat and recovered the Macbook Pro.
Infosecurity notes that the Prey Project software can be activated on the internet in the event a user's machine goes missing and the software then sends regular updates on the location of the computer – using data extrapolated from Google's index of WiFi access points, which are based on data from the cars that monitor localities for the company's contentious Street View service.
Interestingly, the Techworld newswire notes that, although Martin's Macbook Pro used a password, he suspects that the thief used the Mac OS X installation software to create a new account on the computer, although Fork's Prey open source software continued to operate in the background.
The newswire says that, after initially tracking the thief for a couple of hours - during which time the suspect was surfing the internet, “visiting Muslim religious sites, shopping for a car on AutoTrader and even trying to apply for a Tesco gas card using someone else's identity.”
In addition, because Prey takes screenshots, when the thief logged into Facebook, he was then able to obtain the thief's name, high school and address.
The 18-year-old suspected thief is due to appear in court over the theft tomorrow morning, Infosecurity understands.