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How Best Buy’s Computer-Wiping Error Turned Me into an Amateur Blackhat

posted by martyb on Saturday June 13 2015, @08:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the It's-Milliner-Time! dept.

Phoenix666 writes with an interesting anecdote posted on Ars Technica:

We put a lot of trust in big companies, so when they let us down it can have serious consequences.

I recently went shopping for a new computer. I wanted a low-end laptop for light work, and the HP Stream seemed like a good deal. That deal was made even sweeter when Best Buy offered to sell me a returned one for almost 20 percent off. The salesman assured me that it was in like-new condition and that they would honor all warranties. Sold.

I always get a little thrill opening a new gadget. The computer looked like it had never been touched and all the paperwork was still in sealed bags. There was even a slip of paper in the box with the ID of the tech who cleaned and certified the unit.

So it surprised me when I booted up and saw someone else's name and Hotmail address at the login prompt. So much for like-new!

As I stared at the full name and e-mail address of the previous owner—let's call him David—I wondered. Could I get into this computer another way? It was mine after all. And how much more could I learn about him? How bad of a mistake had the store made?

Any similar stories out there Soylentils care to share?

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by bradley13 on Sunday June 14 2015, @05:50AM

    by bradley13 (3053) on Sunday June 14 2015, @05:50AM (#196015) Homepage Journal

    Chain of custody? Evidence tags? Nah...

    Back in the dark ages, when I was a college student visiting family, one of the in-laws was a Secret Service agent. They had a case of credit-card fraud, and had a computer that they thought contained a bunch of stolen credit-card information. I needed to find it, extract and format it and print it out. So he asked me if I could help. So he sat me in an office with the computer; I fiddled, found the data, wrote a program to decode and sort it (it wasn't encrypted or anything) - all of this directly on that computer.

    Being a naive 19 or 20 year old, it didn't occur to me what a absolute idiocy that was, I mean, I was all flattered and working for the Secret Service, gee, golly whiz. Given that I wasn't even a CS major at the time, and just programmed for a hobby, it's a miracle I didn't destroy the data by accident.

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