I know someone that does data retrieval in the police. Mostly for stuff I’d rather not discuss, let’s just say it relates to one of the cases mentioned in the post.
It’s a remarkably straightforward procedure, there’s a few bits of software they use and that’s kind of it. If you’re actually going to real effort to mask your data and you know what you’re doing then theres probably not much they can find, most of the stuff they’re looking at is from people that don’t bother with that kind of thing. Or stuff they wouldn’t think to mask that’s in plain sight (sat nav data to connect a perp to a location etc)
He’s not a technical person in the slightest.
Now this is the police though, not a 3 letter agency of some kind. I’m sure it can get quite advanced at the top.
Computer forensics is very similar problematics to data recovery. Been there done that, back in the age of DOS and FAT16 and manageable sizes of disks even wrote some rudimentary software for custom jobs. Block device imaging (a good idea before trying to recover data is to image the device and work on the image afterwards, same as with forensics) is involved in most cases, which is sequential reading start to end, hence the controller idea. (“If next block requested is the next one in sequence, increment counter by one, otherwise zero the counter. If counter is over x, fail.” Would require to be a bit more complex to account for things like large files but could work. We need an opensource software dev kit for at least one popular USB disk controller chip, with demo software…)
Some of such stuff is pretty arcane. I am tempted to write something about it…
Technically, it’s also known as the cross of jerusalem, in case you want a more neutral connotation-- through I think “Viking Tactics” is just fine with jingoism.
You do use read-only forensic devices to mount the media, it’s not 100% software.
Some parts of the investigation would be fun, analysis of corporate espionage… but cases like Jared’s would just kill my desire for humanity to continue.
I agree. “Jersualem Cross” is the more general name. But to get across pithily on BoingBoing why this might be an issue, the more provocative – and widely used-- name seems appropriate.
That’s great, but my cats can sprunge data in stored electronic and in paperback form too. They’ll sprunge your stuff when you’re writing, reading or just leaving it laying about. They soak data through their tummies or something.
Don’t own a dog. Even if I did, the damn dog would just bury in the yard where I couldn’t find it. Much like what my cats would do. Keeping it in something inanimate is a plus, in my book.
