Crime Busta

Posted on 4 Jul 2002 at 10:51

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There's more to being a real-life James Bond than flash cars and fast women.
Today's super-spies use a whole range of PC technology to track their targets. We let you in on a top secret investigation to see how it's done.

Everyone wants to be a Hollywood-style secret agent. From James Bond to Austin Powers, the history of undercover heroes on the silver screen reads like a litany of gadgets, girls and exotic climates. And who hasn't daydreamed about saving the world, between living a life of speed boats, fast cars and billion dollar bills?
Well, never say never. With a PC, you too can be a covert agent. As you read on we'll let you in on the files from a top-secret investigation. Top secret, that is, until now. The documents record a crime, and through briefings and training notes you'll see how a crack group of private detectives caught the culprit. We'll expose their secret PC tricks, examine their tools and talk about their methods.
And don't for a minute think you'll need a budget of millions. Many of the techniques we'll look at can easily be carried out using free software or my pointing your browser at easy-to-use Web sites. For example, we'll see how you can come close to tracking down a telephone caller's location simply by noting down a number you've obtained by using BT's 1471 service. With that number, we'll show you how to trace the call back to the exchange closest to your mystery caller.
And, while we're on the subject of tracking people down, have you ever wondered how you can trace the geographical origin of an e-mail? Or how you can pinpoint your exact location on the globe? Read on, and the world of international computerised espionage will be laid bare.
The Mission
Alfons, a prize-winning gnome, is missing. One day, he was dangling his fishing rod into the pond, the next he was gone without a trace. The usual channels didn't turn up any useful clues. Time to call in the Gnome Rescue Operation Primary Experts - GROPE, for short.
GROPE is a task force whose mission is to apprehend individuals and shatter the shadowy organisations that target the Gnomic community. More importantly, they're also PC experts, well versed in using computers, cameras and telephone systems to solve crimes. And here's how they solved this one...
The Kidnap
Incident:
Alfons, a prize-winning gnome, has been kidnapped. A ransom demand for his safe return has been made via e-mail.
Action plan:
We need to find out as much information as we can about Alfons' captors. How much can we learn by analysing the e-mail?
Agent on call: Agent X, GROPE's computer expert.
Agent X is a computer hacker who uses his skills for the powers of good. He knows how computer operating systems and networks really work. This insight allows him to manipulate and explore computers, even those that he's not authorised to access. He can take remote control of computers, download secret files and read them o even if they've been encrypted.
What can we find out?
The ransom demand was made in an e-mail, and an e-mail message contains a number of clues as to its origin. The first, most obvious one is the e-mail address it was sent from. E-mail addresses are easy to forge, however.
The baddies only needed to enter a fake address when setting up their Outlook Express e-mail account to throw us off the scent. Agent X won't even waste time investigating an e-mail address like hahaha@microsoft.com - it's obviously fake. Instead, he dives down into the strange lines of text called the Internet Header that appear at the top of each message. To see these, you may have to open the message and choose Properties from the File menu. Let's look at the ransom demand's Internet Header, and see how we can actually work out the geographical location of an e-mail's origin! Here's the first bit (addresses have been changed to protect the innocent):