New York mother, son arrested in theft of Pelosi's laptop

[BumRushDaShow]

36. The way ours worked

if they were doing "overnight" patches, was that we would log off with the machine still on. And the machines were not tied to a specific PIV - i.e., they allowed for windoze to establish the local user accounts so a login by staff to a different machine could happen.

I am not sure what special Administrator accounts were set up to be added to the images that were put on the machines (and I think the encryption stuff was done through modifications to the BIOS). But once new machines were all set up and distributed (and the IT staff did actually connect to our HQ through a special Admin account during the imaging and setup), they could be accessed remotely - apparently through connection to whatever special account was configured on the machine.

Nowhere did I say that someone actually succeeded in "breaking in" to that laptop (considering it's the first time I even heard about a "2nd laptop" ) but absent a true "hardened" laptop (and we had a few staff in our agency with them), they are not impenetrable - but obviously would be for amateurs like these two. As it is, my agency would routinely freak when someone on the road lost a laptop when a GOV was broken into.

There was an earlier issue with the original "conference room laptop" where that thief had supposedly attempted to sell it (not that there was anything on it as I noted) - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/capitol-rioter-plotted-sell-stolen-pelosi-laptop-russian-intelligence-n1254583

My issue was more with the fact that given the casual nature of our Legislative Branch when compared to the Executive Branch agencies - particularly with their offices - there is a bit of danger there more than elsewhere. You would hope that they had similar safeguards in place. But again, as we have seen with the casual nature of physical security at the Capitol with respect to members and their staff, one wonders... and obviously they are not going to come right out and reveal any exploitable loopholes. They would work on any and all corrective actions that might be needed behind the scenes.

I also just found this where Clyburn's iPad was stolen too - https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2021/01/08/clyburns-ipad-laptop-from-pelosis-office-items-stolen-destroyed-in-capitol-attack/?sh=5ba79a195963