This evening I read an article about using an appealing car as bait in order to catch criminals carjacking. The report quotes that there is nearly 100% success rate in convicting the theif because there is live footage from within the car. I noticed that this type of strategy was very familiar to the honeypot, a term in computer security which describes a setup to entrap a would be attacker. I know how the media likes to exaggerate on tech issues, but is this really such a cutting edge breakthrough? It would surprise me if it was, because these concepts have been around for a long time.
Furthermore, we know that there are security concepts which are modelled from real life, such as Intrusion Detection Systems, analogous to a house alarm, but what other adaptations have been taken from the computing world? Perhaps there are still even more methods which haven’t been used by the police and other authorities to catch criminals, but are common practice within the IT community.
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These have been around Vancouver for quite a while – see http://www.baitcar.com/
Related advertisements are in and around some parking lots – “Steal one, Go to Jail”
I’m waiting until they extend the idea to bait houses, bait bikes, bait laptops and bait ipods
Certainly the concept of dangling an easy prize as temptation is not one that was invented in the last couple centuries. This tactic is quite ancient as the object used as a lure is referred to as bait, which is exactly what one uses to catch greedy fish. The fancy car, the easy lay, the computer system which can be easily hacked are all just alluring articles of bait in order to catch bigger fish.