alt Hacker NewsA 7U cabinet in an overhead space that is difficult to access. Installation and configuration were a bit of a headache but ended up being worth it. There was a NAS in the office and they stripped 7 drives, sleds and all, out of it.
I'm guessing with such an obvious endpoint for the camera storage it never occurred to anyone there was a second box. I had something like this in mind when I wired the building. It seemed like a good idea to make onsite security footage much harder to find given the cameras were obvious and anyone breaking in would probably look to damage or destroy the system.
I really thought the cameras themselves were the deterrent, but these guys gave it a shot anyway. Cutting the cable to the starlink and walking off with the NAS drives seemed to be the plan.
In the future I'm going to add a local battery backed alarm connected to external siren and strobe that is immediate on opening the office door to draw attention. I was driving down to WWDC when the starlink went offline and saw the notice on my phone but wrote it off to equipment failure which gave them enough time to clean the place out pretty well.
The hole in my strategy was thinking nothing could happen without notification, but being in a car in the middle of Norther CA with spotty cell coverage and lots of distractions blew that up pretty hard. I'm also thinking one of ubiquiti's cellular backups is in my future. Starlink offline is annoying but not the attention grabber that a still of a guy walking in the door would have been. Cellular backup would have gotten me that.
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I have found that the fog generating alarm systems are the ones that will stop burglars in their tracks.
If they can't see, they're not going to hang about and if they've tooled up with NV then that's a whole different threat model.
> In the future I'm going to add a local battery backed alarm
Wait, you have an office full of expensive equipment but decided to half-ass DIY the security? No wonder you were targeted.
A proper monitored alarm system would have prevented this. They pretty much all have built-in cellular backup now. Do yourself a favor next time and call a professional.
Don't blow your entire budget on cameras then wonder if you need an alarm system because the only good the cameras will serve is to watch your stuff disappear. You mentioned California so expect these guys to be roaming free in short order if they see any jail time at all. Good luck with seeing any restitution or getting your stuff back.
I'd be alarmed that they seemed to know you were going to WWDC. Like, they were tech-aware if they took the drives while you went to tech event... how did they know any of this / scout you?