Re: [SLE] Root password - is it THAT simple to alter it?

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To: suse-linux-e@suse.com
Date: Sun, 4 Sep 2005 18:37:58 +0100

On Sunday 04 Sep 2005 18:11, Randall R Schulz wrote:
> Mike,
>
> On Sunday 04 September 2005 09:56, Mike wrote:
<SNIP>
> > Data recovery experts are able to undo several writes to a disk,
> > which is why wipe disk programs do several passes, and agencies
> > that are concerned about loss of data grind up the disk afterwards
> > rather than take the chance that someone may have improved the
> > technique to read wiped data.
>
> Even assuming this claim is valid, why on earth would anybody go to
> these lengths?

OK, one of my close friends is head of IT auditing for a major City law
firm. Recently, a dispute arose between two of their clients over a
clause in a contract. Basically, one party claimed a rewording had not
been authorised. Several hard drives and backup sets were analysed by a
third party data recovery outfit who recovered a complete edit trail of
the relevant documents. Some parts had to be extracted from
over-written temporaray files because intermediate copies of the
documents had been deleted and didn't occur in the nightly backups.
This being a law firm dealing in contracts amounting to many millions
of pounds each, they keep copious backups. The fact the intermediate
documents were deleted may or may not be a matter of criminal
investigation. The edit trail of the documents in this case are
currently being considered by other lawyers to assess whether they can
be upheld in court. So, to answer your question - the claim IS valid,
and when millions of pounds or criminal action can rest on the validity
of a document it becomes worth going to those lengths.

>
> And does anyone ever stop to apply logic to this claim? Do you think
> this retained data is neatly layered so you can distinguish the
> remnants from each of those previous write cycles?

Manifestly, it is possible. The same heuristics which are applied in the
analysis of document authenticity for historical attribution and
plagiarism resolution can be applied to overlapping data sets in order
to separate them diachronically.

> > There have also been rumors that they can read data from old ram,

I'd be very sceptical about that.

> > and the EM leaking from your screen can be read from across the
> > street.

But this is true, I've seen it done first hand - how do you think TV
detector vans work to find licence avoiders (in the UK.)

Dylan

-- 
"The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out."
                                                (Chinese Proverb)
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• Previous message: Jose Thadeu Cavalcante: "Re: [SLE] Symbol in OpenOffice"
• In reply to: Randall R Schulz: "Re: [SLE] Root password - is it THAT simple to alter it?"
• Next in thread: Allen: "Re: [SLE] Root password - is it THAT simple to alter it?"
• Reply: Allen: "Re: [SLE] Root password - is it THAT simple to alter it?"
• Reply: Randall R Schulz: "Re: [SLE] Root password - is it THAT simple to alter it?"
• Reply: James Knott: "Re: [SLE] Root password - is it THAT simple to alter it?"
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