High-tech criminals – danger from above: Burglars now use drones

Just twenty years ago, burglars passed on the information they learned about the owners of their flats to accomplices through crook teeth: secret messages scratched into the wall. In this way they could find out the absence times of residents, so that if the apartment was empty, they could break open the front door with special crowbars (Gashaxn).

Drones with surveillance cameras
Today, burglars are high-tech criminals. Professionals who specialize in disabling advanced electronic security and alarm systems. Sometimes they even use drones with surveillance cameras. The latest coup in the Viennese apartment of ÖVP minister Karoline Edtstadler shows the calmness with which the perpetrators strike. Like spies, the criminals penetrate supposedly insurmountable electronic barriers to cripple systems.

They also hack computers, mobile phones, laptops, etc. via the internet to obtain information about residents and their presence. Here’s a brief overview of the latest tricks from the burglar mafia – a new era of crime:

• Smart Home Hacking: The perpetrators exploit vulnerabilities in network devices. We look for weaknesses in cameras, door locks or alarm systems to gain unauthorized access. Printers are major weaknesses.

• Social media monitoring: Burglars scour social media to obtain information via messages about vacations, business trips or other absences of a resident.

• Lock picking and bumping: The classic methods of relocking and cracking locks using dexterity – only experienced criminals can master this.

• Printing techniques and window manipulation: Criminals use special tools to open windows and doors without leaving a trace.

• Funk Jamming: Radio jammers (jamming devices) are used to disrupt communication between security systems and alarm systems using their own frequencies – undetected entry into a home is possible.

• Keyloggers: Passwords and credentials are stolen by key recorders secretly installed in computers.

• drones: Today’s high-tech professionals even use drones to scout terrain and breach security systems.

Tracks are still being evaluated
In a burglary by ÖVP minister Edtstadler, two men, masked with scarves and caps, were broadcast live on web surveillance cameras in the apartment. One deliberately reached toward the camera, but then the image cut off. The CCTV footage and genetic traces are now being evaluated.