Office Memo 24
Office Memo 24
8 November 2006
Sex, Spies and Hard-drives
According to data recovery specialists, Disklabs, out of 1,000 hard-drives it examined over the course of a year, 700 contained pornographic material. Also, the company recently bought a selection of storage media comprising 100 hard-disk drives and 50 memory cards. Processing a sample batch showed that documents such as accounting spreadsheets (including names and mobile phone numbers) and curricula vitae were easily accessible.
Perhaps even more worrying was the fact that many previous owners had not deleted temporary Internet files. This means that an unscrupulous new owner could access personal financial details, such as credit card numbers. He or she could then go on to order goods from Internet pages by simply changing the delivery address. Pornographic matter was present on many of these media, too.
It seems that few people are aware that pressing the delete button does not necessarily mean that data is removed and irretrievable. Data should be destroyed properly and not simply deleted or reformatted. This is not enough to erase stored data.
Disklabs have since contacted all the owners of the unwiped hard-drives and memory cards and told them their old media still contained retrievable data. (All these storage devices have since been properly wiped. They are now being used as spare parts for further data recovery tasks.)
Points to note
1. Disklabs bought the entire selection of products from eBay.
2. Most of the traders who sold the goods didn't care that the data wasn't wiped properly. One of them said just to delete everything and sell it back on eBay!
3. Don't trust a trader to wipe any data from your computer. Nearly all those did successfully were members of The Professional Computing Association (and were thus bound by the PCA's code of conduct).
4. Disklabs discovers roughly two paedophile cases a year. It passes these over to the relevant police authorities.
5. Data can be recovered from SIM/USIM cards and mobile phone bodies. Forensic reports can also be produced from these.
6. Most of the pornography on mobile phones is taken by the phone owners themselves, rather than downloaded.
Lessons
1. If you want your data wiped properly, use an expert, such as a PC Association member. Do not rely on traders who offer to do it for you. About 30% of them either will not bother or will do a `botch job' of it.
2. Data is nearly always retrievable. If you need data recovering, send it to a specialist. `Mr Fixits' nearly always make the job more difficult for the professionals and most likely more expensive.
3. Data can be recovered from mobile phones, PDAs and other hand-held devices.
4. Trade only with members of The PC Association.
***
Simon Steggles, of Disklabs Data Recovery and computer forensics services, contributed this article. Our thanks go to him. For further information, call 01827 55999.
Disklabs is exhibiting at Business Continuity -- The Risk Management Expo 2007. This is the UK's largest event for managing risk, resilience and recovery. It takes place at London's Excel, Docklands, from 28-29 March 2007.
|
About Office Memos
An Office Memo is an extended comment on what is happening in the world of the electronic business and elsewhere. Some memos will have appeared in Office Jotter; others are simply referred to in it.
You are free to disagree with, amplify or even agree with anything that appears in Office Jotter or an Office Memo. Of course, the rest of us will never know this unless you write in with your views, so please comment, in the blog or with an Office Memo*.
Content from Office Jotter or Office Memo may be circulated freely, so long as you remember to credit its source.
Thanks,
Publisher and editor
*No more than 1,000 words at a time, please. I edit material for publication but as lightly as possible.
Copyright Roger Whitehead, 2006. I hereby assert and give notice of my right under section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998 to be identified as the author of these publications.
|