Stolen RED DRAGON #01615

[Ron Elliot]

Some one just broke into my apartment and stole my RED DRAGON #01615, MacBook Pro, five glyph hard drives, set of nine IRND filters, O'Connor matte box, tv logic 7" monitor, Canon 5dmk3, a set of Anton Bauer 140 batteries, and more.
This occurred in Long Island City, NY, 9/6/14 around 6:00PM. Any help would be appreciated.

Ron Elliot

 

[Neil Dearman]

Dude they are going to hell!!!!! I hate hearing about this man always hits the heart hang in there man!!!!!

 

[Kwan Khan]

Bad..

 

[Russ Fill]

Sounds like they knew what they were looking for. didn't leave anything they would not need.
So sorry to hear. I hope you get it back...

 

[Nick Fury]

At least tell us you had insurance...

 

[Owen Rennie]

Sux to hear Ron.. Yes hope nick is right and you have insurance...

Also bit late now but i recommend everyone buy one of these.. weighs 350kg, i welcome people to try steal it

 

[Tom Greenberg]

F**ing Scumbags!! I hate hearing about stuff like this. Good luck Ron…hope you were well insured...

 

[ericyoung]

Sorry to hear your news! :sad:

Does sound like a knowledgeable burglary. Do you advertise your home address anywhere with your kit list?

 

[Lakis Amarantithis]

It might be a good idea for Red to design a kind of a gps addition to put in the camera so it'll give you always the location where you shoot like the phones have. That can benefit people who travel and shoot and in this case benefit the owners from theft.

If the thief turn it on the gps will locate the camera.

Very sorry for your loss!

 

[Alexandros Tsoupras]

It might be a good idea for Red to design a kind of a gps addition to put in the camera so it'll give you always the location where you shoot like the phones have. That can benefit people who travel and shoot and in this case benefit the owners from theft.

If the thief turn it on the gps will locate the camera.

Very sorry for your loss!

+1000 on that.

 

[Brian F Kobylarz]

It might be a good idea for Red to design a kind of a gps addition to put in the camera so it'll give you always the location where you shoot like the phones have. That can benefit people who travel and shoot and in this case benefit the owners from theft.

If the thief turn it on the gps will locate the camera.

Very sorry for your loss!

This has been suggested as a possible feature going all the way back to the RED One's.

Unfortunately, it can work against us as well.
Just imagine if one expert hacker were to penetrate the security on RED's servers and extract the code to send out a command query "Find all RED's".
How much would the crooks pay for that data? Download the code and the hacker might make it an app for sale to their "industry".
In that case, the cameras themselves would be vulnerable until the factory resets the search ID's on each individual body.
Using hacked GPS data could tell a thief exactly where the camera was secured during lunch - or in what hotel room, which truck, etc...

Only a matter of time before one of them figures out how to reverse engineer the GPS flag to disable it.


A few other ideas suggested at one point or another:
1. The ability for the camera to require a password to boot up. Surprisingly, a lot of owners objected to that idea. There was a great fear of being locked out by mistake.
2. Detection of a stolen ID when firmware is being updated and a silent notification sent back to RED.
3. A small program that can be accessed on the web that would flag R3D's at post houses (Camera ID is currently captured in the metadata)

Other approaches were proposed as well - bottom line, every possible solution had at least one flaw but there does need to be a workable solution at some point.

 

[Sulekh Suman]

Stolen Dragon

Stolen Dragon

Kill switch!

 

[Christof Paul]

i would gladly take the risk of someone hacking into red's servers in exchange of having a gps signal coming from the camera and being able to locate it at all times. nothing is perfect but it works for cellphones and cars and would be a very welcome addition to me.

the other solution is for all of us to simply not buy it no matter what the price. it also should not be too hard to put the serial number into the metadata and being able to "fingerprint" each and every clip anywhere to the camera if came from.

 

[Brian F Kobylarz]

it also should not be too hard to put the serial number into the metadata and being able to "fingerprint" each and every clip anywhere to the camera if came from.

Unique information is already baked in.

As I mentioned in point #3 above, the serial number is in the metadata - not visible in REDCineX Pro, but can be retrieved with a hex editor.

This was an early innovation that RED introduced back in 2007.


Quoting Stuart English in December of that year:

Please let everyone that you do business with know that RED ONE cameras have a unique 9 digit electronic serial number - a P.I.N - that complements the physical serial number tag. The latter may be erased, defaced or otherwise tampered with, but the P.I.N can't.

The P.I.N is also written to every video frame recorded (its in the .R3D file) but an instant view of the camera P.I.N is available by pressing the key to the right of the joystick, plus the joystick itself. The P.I.N will then be displayed in the rear LCD panel. In the case of my test camera, the P.I.N is ABC_123_XYZ

The P.I.N is also displayed on the rear LCD panel and on all monitor ports at camera boot up from Build 8 firmware onwards.



To the best of my knowledge, the capture of unique camera ID information carried into EPIC's and Scarlet's.
The "fingerprint" is in every single frame, not just the clip.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Would be great if REDCine-X Pro would refuse to render any frames from stolen cameras. I would also be perfectly happy with RCX prompting me so that I could email RED if I get any footage from a thief. Any reputable post house I'm sure would be more than happy to report stolen camera footage.

 

[Donald MJ Anderson]

Would be great if REDCine-X Pro would refuse to render any frames from stolen cameras. I would also be perfectly happy with RCX prompting me so that I could email RED if I get any footage from a thief. Any reputable post house I'm sure would be more than happy to report stolen camera footage.

I like that idea but lets hope for no bugs in that code! Yikes!

 

[Curran Giddens]

Would be great if REDCine-X Pro would refuse to render any frames from stolen cameras. I would also be perfectly happy with RCX prompting me so that I could email RED if I get any footage from a thief. Any reputable post house I'm sure would be more than happy to report stolen camera footage.

I think this is a great idea.

 

[Med D]

Just imagine if one expert hacker were to penetrate the security on RED's servers and extract the code to send out a command query "Find all RED's".

Or one not-so-expert hacker just looking up home addresses for people who are asked to use their real names on a public web forum? Nothing like posting your name and identifying yourself as a $40k+ camera owner to the world.

30 seconds and a free website offer addresses for both you and the OP -- your street is shown as "Ho#$%t. Of course those are not always accurate but I doubt it would take many tries to get a direct hit.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

It might be a good idea for Red to design a kind of a gps addition to put in the camera so it'll give you always the location where you shoot like the phones have. That can benefit people who travel and shoot and in this case benefit the owners from theft.

If the thief turn it on the gps will locate the camera.

Very sorry for your loss!

This has been suggested a few times since the early days of Red, made some myself, but back then these thingies weren't on the market:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/s/ref=is_box_gps?k=gps+tracker



EDIT: just saw that Brian made a nice summary.

 

[Brian F Kobylarz]

Or one not-so-expert hacker just looking up home addresses for people who are asked to use their real names on a public web forum? Nothing like posting your name and identifying yourself as a $40k+ camera owner to the world.

30 seconds and a free website offer addresses for both you and the OP -- your street is shown as "Ho#$%t. Of course those are not always accurate but I doubt it would take many tries to get a direct hit.

That includes a pretty big assumption - that any equipment is accessible at the same location. However, a GPS track would verify or exclude.
Not to mention any IDS or other security processes and or protections are in place.

No matter where the gear is stored, a good rule of thumb is to ensure the response time by authorities is shorter than a thief can penetrate the perimeter, bypass protections, access the gear and escape.

My point on the hacker is that it could tell someone with bad intent where any camera would be within a few feet.


As far as RCX locking up footage, that would need to be date sensitive (locks after date xx/xx/xx when reported stolen). Otherwise, everything that camera ever shot would be locked out.
A thief could circumvent that measure by using or supplying an "archived" version of RCX that had not been updated.

Gavin, I believe it was you that brought up a report to RED feature years ago - damn straight - a great idea. Keep pushing it.

All others - contribute ideas to help protect everyone in this community.