Veterans data recovered

Thread view:

Enable EMail Alerts

Start New Thread

Thread rating:

Electrician - 29 Jun 2006 23:07 GMT

The FBI announced today that the laptop computer containing information about
millions of veterans and some active duty personnel has been recovered. I
quote from their press release:
"A preliminary inspection indicated that the data, which included Social
Security numbers, dates of birth and other sensitive information, potentially
on active-duty military service members as well as veterans, has not been
touched or copied, the FBI said in a statement. A more thorough forensic
investigation is under way."
Uh, okay, as a veteran I'm happy they've recovered our data. But how exactly
do they know the data wasn't copied?

Reply to this Message

JPH - 29 Jun 2006 23:26 GMT

> The FBI announced today that the laptop computer containing information about
> millions of veterans and some active duty personnel has been recovered. I
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
> Uh, okay, as a veteran I'm happy they've recovered our data. But how exactly
> do they know the data wasn't copied?

Glad to hear they got it back! I don't know how they can prove it wasn't
copied, but there's a lot I don't know about computers, like how you can
delete files and yet they can still be recovered.
Maybe they could confirm that the computer was never turned on after it
was stolen, therefore the probability the hard drive was copied is low.
I read today that the person that was fired for taking the laptop home
had written permission to do so, so they may have unfairly dismissed him.

John

Reply to this Message

Lint Radley - 30 Jun 2006 05:30 GMT

Well, it's not 100% tamper-proof, but most computer file systems keep a
log of when files were created, last accessed, and last modified. So
they should be able to see and date and time of when it was last
accessed. Like I said earlier, however, it's not tamper-proof. So no
guarantees.

IMHO, the laptop was probably stolen because the thief wanted a laptop,
NOT the data that was on it. Let's hope at least.

Hope this clears things up.

-Lint

Reply to this Message

Nirodac - 01 Jul 2006 07:41 GMT

You don't need to boot the laptop up to a windows OS to copy
the disk drive. There are programs that operate at the DOS
level, like Norton's Ghost, that will create a complete image
of the disk and copy it to a jump drive (USB port).

You can recover delete files because they are never deleted.
Windows simply removes there directory entry (pointer) then
makes the disk space available for future use. If you want to
completely delete your files you need to over write their
location on the disk drive.

> Well, it's not 100% tamper-proof, but most computer file
> systems keep a log of when files were created, last
[quoted text clipped - 22 lines]
>> happy they've recovered our data. But how exactly do they
>> know the data wasn't copied?

Reply to this Message