Thread: Police, Borders and Microsoft

Microsoft develops device that will instantly bypass all security

Microsoft has developed a small plug-in device that investigators can use to quickly extract forensic data from computers that may have been used in crimes.

The COFEE, which stands for Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, is a USB "thumb drive" that was quietly distributed to a handful of law-enforcement agencies last June. Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith described its use to the 350 law-enforcement experts attending a company conference Monday.

US Police now allowed to extract backups of civilian harddrives when they wish to cross the border (suspect had criminal history)

Romm was denied entry by the Canadian authorities because of his criminal history. When he returned to the Seattle-Tacoma airport, he was interviewed by two agents of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division.

They asked to search his laptop, and Romm agreed. Agent Camille Sugrue would later testify that she used the "EnCase" software to do a forensic analysis of Romm's hard drive.

That analysis and a subsequent one found some 42 child pornography images, which had been present in the cache used by Romm's Web browser and then deleted. But because in most operating systems, only the directory entry is removed when a file is "deleted," the forensic analysis was able to recover the actual files.

During the trial, Romm's attorney asked that the evidence from the border search be suppressed. The trial judge disagreed. Romm was eventually sentenced to two concurrent terms of 10 and 15 years for knowingly receiving and knowingly possessing child pornography.

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The 9th Circuit refused to overturn his conviction, ruling that American citizens effectively enjoy no right to privacy when stopped at the border.

As usual, I'll wait a while before I post my opinions on the far reaching side effects of these events.

well, that's interesting. but currently, there are already lighter un-delete programs that are free to install and use. as for crime prevention, there are already data reconstruction labs that specialize in finding deleted data. and there are programs to truly delete something forever but writing and re-writing the memory location of the file hundreds of times.

so, it's not really that revolutionary imo. just something makes things a bit easier for the police.

Talk about your invasion of privacy. There are SOME limits.

Artum is just worried about his collection of haruhi and loli pr0n being found.

Yep, not actually a hundred of times, deleting 4 gb iso images would take forever to do that. There is a statistical method of deleting random bits that produces the same result. I believe it was a paper by Tony Guttmann and a program called Eraser used his method.

OK.. time to start encrypting my external.. lol

TrueCrypt ftw XD

Anything that can be encrypted can be decrypted, and I assure you, the FBI party van has better equipment than you do.

NSA-7 write pass, the only efficient way to do it. (There are more ridiculously effective ways but they are super slow and thus, not efficient).

Originally Posted by qualia

OK.. time to start encrypting my external.. lol

TrueCrypt ftw XD

Alot easier to have a high power drill next to your computer, so you can crack the platters in a second or two.

Uh... in that case, wouldnt carrying one of those super strong magnets made of rare earth metals be easier?