Alternative Browsers Impede Investigations 720
rbochan writes "Allegations in an article over at CNET propose that alternate browsers such as Firefox and Opera impede law enforcement and investigation efforts because they "use different structures, files and naming conventions for the data that investigators are after", which can "cause trouble for examiners.""
It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of the dumbest articles I've read in a while...
From TFA:Implying that 'alternate browsers' such as Firefox and Opera, 'hide' data? Shenanigans! These other browsers don't 'hide' anything...you just have to know where to look.
Also from TFA:You can't be serious. If it's this easy to thwart the authorities, maybe I should tender my resume.
God help these 'professionals' if a suspect's computer happens to run Linux...which brings up a disturbing thought...is the presence of a 'non-standard' browser or OS now going to be 'suspicious' to investigators, because they can't seem to penetrate its 'arcane secrets'?
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:3, Funny)
On the BeOS version of Firefox it's ALT+H, not CTRL+H!
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Funny)
Good job. Now you've flagged yourself and the FBI is undoubtedly on its way. Giving away what is most likely a National Secrect! Please don't let them look here [mozilla.org].
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Informative)
Digital forensics is performed offline. You don't run the browser software to read its history.
However, I fail to see how this would create problems for law enforcement. Most of the interesting data is readily available. And the data formats haven't changed that much since the days when Netscape was the dominant browser.
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe their forensic tools can extract the browser history from the file and the software isn't aware a bookmarks file doesn't have to be named "favorites".
At least I hope that's the issue.
Tip for Kiddie Porn addicts: Keep your vids in someplace besides the "My Videos" folder. The authorities will never be able to find them if they're "hidden" in some other folder.
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:3, Funny)
The Spooks are confused as hell. In fact, the last time I was investigated, one of the Detectives said "Fuck this!", whipped out his own high powered magnet, and aced my computer.
Ummm - it's not offline (Score:5, Interesting)
Their parole office will drop by periodically and check their PC. They have some sort of forensic software that does this.
I've heard some jurisdictions require that you only run Windows on your computer as a condition of your parole. Logically this translates to going back to prison for owning a knoppix cd.
There simply aren't the resources to train all parole officers in computer forensics, expose them to various obscure operating systems, or to perform regular offline analysis of offenders hard drives.
The resources are (probably) there for big cases, but when there are probably close to half a million sex offenders on parole - it's just not practical.
Re:Ummm - it's not offline (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree (Score:3, Informative)
You can find clues of these things though. Look at the vnc history, try pinging the broadcast address on the subnet, look in the arp cache, see if there are clues in the registry that another drive was mounted.
I suspect it would be very hard to thwarte a computer forensics expert, but i'm sure the VAST majority of petty criminals can be caught by someone with a weeks worth of trai
Re:Ummm - it's not offline (Score:3, Insightful)
It's up to the government to get with the times and update their forensics software. If their software vendor can't do it for them (no pun intended) then change vendors.
Bwahaha. If your a sex offender you HAVE to use M$ (Score:5, Funny)
Male voiceover
"Microsoft, used by 100% of all sex offenders. Its not only the law, it their punishment."
Oh! I just fell off my chair.
Re:Ummm - it's not offline (Score:4, Insightful)
Welcome to Oops!
Here, we have aa drunken frat boy who took a whiz in a parking lot. Public indecency, sex offender. Over here, we've got a highschooler who mooned his principal on graduation day. Sex offender.
So lets all say it together! "OOPS!"
Keep that in mind while you're busy waving around your burning crosses and what not. Not everyone who is a "sex offender" is a child rapist, or even really all that offensive.
Re:Ummm - it's not offline (Score:5, Insightful)
But for now, you can murder somebody, and you don't have to register, but mooning somebody, peeing outside, or being 20 and having sex with a 17 year old who said she was 19 can get you labeled as a sex offender for life (depends on the state) and that's just plain wrong.
I suspect that varies from state to state. In any event, even if you molest your child, you're still their parent, so it would seem appropriate that you should still have `paternal rights' (which is a remarkably vague concept anyways.)They (Child Protective Services and similar government organizations) don't generally take children away from their parents and never ever give them back except maybe in the most extreme cases. Being placed in a foster home or orphanage, especailly forever, is seriously disruptive to a child's life, so they're not going to do that if there's any other alternative. They'll have to look at each case individually and try and work out what's best for the children. In most cases, that probably involves staying with the parent(s), and instead getting counselling for the parents or something.
Infants generally have no problems getting adopted. But once the kids grow up a bit, things change, especially if they're not white. Few people want to adopt them, and so they get shuffled between foster parents and orphanages. Not a good way to grow up.
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Informative)
------------
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use File::Mork;
my $mork = File::Mork->new('history.dat', verbose=> 1)
|| die $File::Mork::ERROR."\n";
foreach my $entry ($mork->entries) {
while (my($key,$val) = each %$entry) {
print "$key = $val\n";
}
print "\n";
}
------------
BTW, I do realize that your post was sarcastic... as is this one.
Works perfectly if run in the same directory as history.dat and produces output like:
ID = 388D
URL = http://www.google.com/ [google.com]
Hostname = google.com
LastVisitDate = 1125064549
FirstVisitDate = 1125064549
Name = Google
It should be left to guru perl coders making $500,000/yr or more to do fancy things like convert timestamps to dates.
I guess it's a good thing that there are no tools available for Windows that auto-clear IE history, cookies or cache files! What would law enforcement do??
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Funny)
Now THIS is funny - from the File::Monk man page:
THE UGLY TRUTH LAID BARE ^
Extracted from mork.pl
In Netscape Navigator 1.0 through 4.0, the history.db file was just a Berkeley DBM file. You could trivially bind to it from Perl, and pull out the URLs and last-access time. In Mozilla, this has been replaced with a "Mork" database for which no tools exist.
Let me make it clear that McCusker is a complete barking lunatic. This is just about the stupidest file format I've ever seen.
http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/arch/mork/primer.
http://jwz.livejournal.com/312657.html [livejournal.com]
http://www.jwz.org/doc/mailsum.html [jwz.org]
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24143
In brief, let's count its sins:
* Two different numerical namespaces that overlap.
* It can't decide what kind of character-quoting syntax to use: Backslash? Hex encoding with dollar-sign?
* C++ line comments are allowed sometimes, but sometimes
* It goes to all this serious compression effort (two different string-interning hash tables) and then writes out Unicode strings without using UTF-8: writes out the unpacked wchar_t characters!
* Worse, it hex-encodes each wchar_t with a 3-byte encoding, meaning the file size will be 3x or 6x (depending on whether whchar_t is 2 bytes or 4 bytes.)
* It masquerades as a "textual" file format when in fact it's just another binary-blob file, except that it represents all its magic numbers in ASCII. It's not human-readable, it's not hand-editable, so the only benefit there is to the fact that it uses short lines and doesn't use binary characters is that it makes the file bigger. Oh wait, my mistake, that isn't actually a benefit at all.
Pure comedy.
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:3, Funny)
Luckily it also popped-up everything I had open with a restart.
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Funny)
Lt.Jones: "You you know Smith, I sometimes wonder if we just were competant with computers if we could well, you know, understand basic computer forensics instead of relying on software to do it for us?"
Sgt.Smith: "Shutup Jones, theres a way we do things here, it's the microsoft way, all other ways are abhorant and methods of the terrorists."
Lt.Jones: "Good call Smith!"
*sigh* It's only sad because it could be true. Police forces need to hire security professionals and train them to be computer forensics. Not hire police officers and rely on them to learn the ins and outs of computer security.
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple as that.
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Insightful)
But I wish more software was designed with leaving a small or non-existant trail as a design consideration.
When I speak on the phone, none of it get's recorded unless someone makes a special effort to do so. I would hope my computing experience could be the same.
And I really hate the idea that a bunch of you people are thinking I'm some kind of major criminal for wanting it that way. If you happen to be one of the ones that think I should be happy to have everything logged, then please set up a web cam in your bedroom and tape everything that happens. After all, there really isn't any chance of it falling into the wrong hands and law enforcement might need to check those tapes to make sure you're not snorting coke in there. Cops are good people and none of them will laugh about what you're doing witht that banana. I promise.
TW
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's just begging for a virus/trojan that might infect a PC to steal confidential data.
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Informative)
There you go, transparent encrypted directory.
Also, Truecrypt [truecrypt.org] is capable of encrypting stuff too.
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which means it is transparent to the logged in user, which means it is transparent to the virus/ trojan horse/ spyware.
And your point?
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah and then a few weeks later... (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, it happened at work, and it was not pretty.
Re:Yeah and then a few weeks later... (Score:4, Informative)
yes it does (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:3, Interesting)
Right click the directory you want to un-encrypt, select properties, security, and press teh advanced button.
Select the 'Owner' tab, then add your user account and administrator as owners. Remove all other owners.
Check Replace owner on subcontainers and objects
Switch the the Permissio
does this say something about education? (Score:3)
If I were the authorities I would be insulted by this article and it implying they aren't smart.
In a related story ... (Score:5, Funny)
Said an officer who wished to remain anonymous: "We're not even sure there was a murder without some trace of lead at the scene. A bullet
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Another article with the same logic (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Another article with the same logic (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it doesn't. (Score:3, Funny)
Forget about locking doors... (Score:3, Funny)
If you wear pants, that means that you've got something to hide.
Re:Another article with the same logic (Score:3, Informative)
google cache: http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:JMB0PlWzQEUJ:w
Re:Another article with the same logic (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably, cuz it says "This is satire" right there in the footer
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:3, Insightful)
This being said.....
If we are to value the market economy, we can't let the incompetence of law enforcement be used as an excuse to bully us into using a product released by a convicted monopolist.....
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:3, Interesting)
So what's your solution? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Insightful)
we hired an Ex FBI computer forensics expert, he "retired" 3 years ago at the age of 37. the man knows absolutely nothing about computer forensics. I started talking to him during lunch to ask him how he would recover evidence from a company PC that a user was using to surf kiddie porn with.
He said you grab the IE history folder and temp internet folder.
I asked so what do you do when that user uses the option to empty the contents of that folder or uses XP power tools to set it to empty it on a regular basis. or installed one of those "hide your tracks" programs you get spams about every other week?
He responded that highly skilled hackers like that are not common in the business world and then he would have to send the drive in for electron microscope examination.
The man shit his pants when the situation finally came around that he was unable to retrieve evidence from a ex employee's laptop. I gave them a printout of cookies to all the websites the guy visited and a detailed record of his ill-gotten web useage for the last week he was here. I used my leet haxor skillz and unleased a secret tool called proxy server logs as well in my 20 minutes. He took 7 days to retrieve nothing.
and at that time I was a lowly know-nothing IT guy.
moral of the story? if you have 1/2 a brain it is really easy to elude the police in "computer crime" and hide all your evidence easily. the only thing going for the police is that the typical criminal is working with 1/16th of a brain.
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Interesting)
For example: I have a friend who works in IT for a law enforcement agency. He constantly gets calls from their computer forensics specialist asking for help on why his station won't boot. Usually it's because he overwrote his boot sector while ananyzing a drive (I don't understand either).
Unfortunately the prevailing opinion is that teaching a street cop technology is easier than teaching a tech the intracate details of law enforcement. The higher ups don't realize that any IT persons job is basically an daily investigation. I think the answer is to pair up the two, but again, none of these agencies has asked me.
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:3, Funny)
They'd give the computer back to its owner out of compassion for him being such a geek that he needed to look at pr0n all day in lieu of getting laid.
At least, that's what happened to me...
New Firefox Ad: even the popo can't touch this (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, they seem to be slamming Firefox, but actually it is pretty good advertisement for Firefox. They should put on their front page.
"Even the brightest police investigators can't look at your browser history! Get Firefox today, the most secure browser."
Re:New Firefox Ad: even the popo can't touch this (Score:5, Funny)
Re:New Firefox Ad: even the popo can't touch this (Score:3, Informative)
Re:New Firefox Ad: even the popo can't touch this (Score:5, Funny)
Re:New Firefox Ad: even the popo can't touch this (Score:3, Interesting)
Now extend that to advertising your software as creating barriers to law enforcement investigations. Conspiracy to obstruct justice in an investigation to which national security is attached?
The one thing they should not do is promote this as a feature of their browsers!
Meanwhile, with the open source browsers, this should give ideas to people who do want to hid
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Informative)
Cmon.. any advanced porn^H^H^H^H surfer knows to go to google, enter the url and click through google's url. That way you don't have a suspicious empty dropdown bar and you can simply delete the url and google's search url) from the history and for all intents and purposes, you never went there (just dump the cache).
I guess these guys were never married. Simply having an attentive wife teaches you that FED defeating trick. The location dropdown bar and autocomplete can be a lot of trouble.
Heh
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:3, Funny)
Not that I do that. Er, it works.
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:3, Funny)
Hopefully she not attentative enough to read your /. postings...
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Funny)
I found this out really quick after the SO moved in. Right after she went to check the website of her university which starts with a 'C' and the first link that pops into the autocomplete bar is Cumfiesta.
I just bought her a computer of her own.
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:3, Interesting)
God help these 'professionals' if a suspect's computer happens to run Linux
I remember reading a while back that when the FBI seizes a macintosh computer they ship it to the Canadian Mounties for data recovery because the FBI does not know how to recover data from macintosh computers. I don't know if that is true, but I would not be surprised.
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:3, Informative)
One of my students is an Indiana State Trooper undergoing computer forensics training. Since he's enthusiastic about his classes, I get to hear about what he's being taught at all his Homeland Security-sponsored courses.
And it turns out that he's learning some pretty complex things, at least as far as examining the contents of hard drives. He has programs that can analyze Windows or *nix systems with a good level of accuracy. He talks about looking at pa
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Funny)
"It's an outrage! Why do people insist on impeding our efforts to be an all-seeing eye?"
And In Other News (Score:5, Funny)
Dear god no! (Score:5, Insightful)
Browser concerns (Score:3, Interesting)
Firefox and Opera may use a different method of file structure/ naming, but they *do* have a fundamental process and that process does not vary from system to system.
If you use Firefox... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:If you use Firefox... (Score:4, Funny)
The poor bastards in law enforcement are powerless against it, and I am evil, evil, evil for not living my life with an eye toward making it pathetically easy for any traffic cop to fully investigate me for anything, as any good PATRIOT should.
Muuuuuuuhahahahaha!
KFG
In other news... secret hideouts (Score:5, Funny)
TOR (Score:4, Funny)
Professional white-hat script kiddies (Score:5, Insightful)
Effectively, they're professional script kiddies working for the common good instead of against it.
The lesson? Training. You wouldn't put a detective in the morgue and hand him a scalpel, and you wouldn't drop him in a science lab. You'd hire a coroner, you'd hire someone trained in forensic science. If you're going to search someone's computer for evidence, hire an expert or train someone to become an expert.
script kiddies are vermin, Color of hat regardless (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody should ever make it easy for script kiddies (especially because they have a Chicken Inspector Badge).
Re:Professional white-hat script kiddies (Score:3, Insightful)
They're too damn busy for the "little stuff", but not to busy to cross the street to write me a ticket for riding my bike on an empty sidewalk.
Profit! (Score:3, Funny)
Help me out, /.!!!
1. Submit patent.
2. ???
3. Profit!
This explains everything! (Score:3, Funny)
Um, Duh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Firefox and Opera store information on typed URLs in a different file than IE does, and the files are somewhat tough to decipher
You would think since Firefox is open-source, it would be a trivial matter to determine the format of the cache files by examining the source code.
Re:Um, Duh? (Score:3, Insightful)
No?
What good is the source code going to do him?
Re:Um, Duh? (Score:3, Insightful)
None...but if they divert some of the money they spend on, say, hiring Psychics(tm) hiring a programmer (or for that matter just "someone skilled with computers") THAT person may be helped by it, and can certainly develop some simple "how to find where Firefox puts stuff" training for them.
Re:Um, Duh? (Score:3, Insightful)
If they can hire a programmer who has a clue then just get him to write a script for Encase that automatically searches out and displays Firefox, Opera, Safari, and other browser caches and logs. It would not be very hard at all. Distribute said script to all the police departments, and have the forensic
I laughed (Score:5, Funny)
Now I weep for them.
Wait a second! (Score:4, Funny)
Totally hose 'em up... (Score:5, Funny)
Guilt by association... (Score:3, Funny)
I say, if these "citizens" don't want to be "spied" on, they are SUSPICIOUS! SEND THEM TO GUANTANAMO!
Meanwhile, in Soviet Russa...
In a word: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's one of the reasons I use Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, etc...
Security by obscurity is not essentially valid, but it can be useful.
The government can't force people to organize their thoughts or ideas written down on legal pads with sworn oaths as to dates & times, why should ANY information be handed to them. I run may trace eliminators, for this purpose. I encrypt my file system. If this is going to slow them down or prevent them from gathering evidence, it's done it's job. Just another reason not to buy into the Microsoft way. (I'm not being facetious, it's true: Microsoft has an agenda to be on the side of the law, they HAVE to be lobbying quietly to get stuff like this out and laws passed to enforce it.)
It's not the software . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's not the software . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
"Officer MacGruff, are you an expert in computer forensics? Can you summarize your education? Can you describe your methodology?"
This reminds me of the whole speed camera thing in AU, where they lost a major court case because, given 8 weeks, they couldn't find an expert willing to testify on the relability of hashes as MACs. Not because the testimony wasn't believed, mind, but that they didn't have any.
Re:It's not the software . . . (Score:3, Informative)
Specifically, poorly trained in tech matters. (one would hope, not poorly trained in investigation/law enforcement and the kind of stuff that should be their "core competancies")
I work for a phone company, and often work with various police agencies' "special investigation" units. The officers that I deal with are usually 6-8 year veterans, and have been rotated into SI for a 3-4 year stint. When they have to deal with the interface hardware that they have at ou
"you want to frustrate law enforcement, use a Mac" (Score:5, Interesting)
A visit from the FBI
By Scott Granneman, SecurityFocus
Published Wednesday 28th January 2004 13:05 GMT
[snip]
I teach technology classes at Washington University in St. Louis, a fact that I mentioned in a column from 22 October 2003 titled, "Joe Average User Is In Trouble [securityfocus.com]". In that column, I talked about the fact that most ordinary computer users have no idea about what security means. They don't practice secure computing because they don't understand what that means. After that column came out, I received a lot of email. One of those emails was from Dave Thomas, former chief of computer intrusion investigations at FBI headquarters, and current Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the St. Louis Division of the FBI.
Dave had this to say: "I have spent a considerable amount in the computer underground and have seen many ways in which clever individuals trick unsuspecting users. I don't think most people have a clue just how bad things are." He then offered to come speak to my students about his experiences.
I did what I think most people would do: I emailed Dave back immediately and we set up a date for his visit to my class.
It's not every day that I have an FBI agent who's also a computer security expert come speak to my class, so I invited other students and friends to come hear him speak. On the night of Dave's talk, we had a nice cross-section of students, friends, and associates in the desks of my room, several of them "computer people," most not.
Dave arrived and set his laptop up, an IBM ThinkPad A31. He didn't connect to the Internet - too dangerous, and against regulations, if I recall - but instead ran his presentation software using movies and videos where others would have actually gone online to demonstrate their points. While he was getting everything ready, I took a look at the first FBI agent I could remember meeting in person.
[snip]
Dave had some surprises up his sleeve as well. You'll remember that I said he was using a ThinkPad (running Windows!). I asked him about that, and he told us that many of the computer security folks back at FBI HQ use Macs running OS X, since those machines can do just about anything: run software for Mac, Unix, or Windows, using either a GUI or the command line. And they're secure out of the box. In the field, however, they don't have as much money to spend, so they have to stretch their dollars by buying WinTel-based hardware. Are you listening, Apple? The FBI wants to buy your stuff. Talk to them!
Dave also had a great quotation for us: "If you're a bad guy and you want to frustrate law enforcement, use a Mac." Basically, police and government agencies know what to do with seized Windows machines. They can recover whatever information they want, with tools that they've used countless times. The same holds true, but to a lesser degree, for Unix-based machines. But Macs evidently stymie most law enforcement personnel. They just don't know how to recover data on them. So what do they do? By and large, law enforcement personnel in American end up sending impounded Macs needing data recovery to the acknowledged North American Mac experts: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Evidently the Mounties have built up a knowledge and technique for Mac forensics that is second to none.
[snip]
Dumb law enforcement vs. dumb criminals (Score:4, Insightful)
And if the law enforcement can't figure out how to write a simple tool to decipher the files that are left behind from alternative browsers (especially one like Firefox that is open-source, meaning that the format of such files would be easy to determine), then that's just, well, pathetic.
And finally, I think that this is a good thing. Most people in this world will probably never ever have to deal with law enforcement. But they do have to deal with snooping parents, snooping friends, snooping girlfriends, snooping spouses, snooping bosses, etc., so I welcome this as good news.
This is a great idea! (Score:3, Funny)
What are people thinking, that businesses and products might exist to serve the needs of the people paying for and using them? What nonsense! Only law enforcement matters!
Seriously, even if this were a serious question, don't investigators get MORE useful data in the variations of people's setup? The more unique your suspect's setup, the easier it may be to track them.
And of course it's perfectly simple to find the Firefox cache -- can someone just drop them an email? They can print it out, tack it to the wall, and quit with the whinging.
In other news.... (Score:5, Funny)
Police, baffled by the lack of a blue "e" can't figure out how they used the Internet.
"And there's no START button! How are we supposed to find anything?"
Why should we believe this? (Score:3, Insightful)
The general police forces have managed to get a new story published on how they can not deal with any sort of semi-modern technology. Why should we believe it?
If I were the police, and I'm sure the police have at least one or two people smarter than me. then I would go to great lengths to get this story published. Why? Not because I can't figure out Firfox, be because I -can- figure out Firefox.
If my suspect thinks that I am too dumb to understand Firfox, then my suspect is far less likely to use powerful encryption. Without the powerful encruption, I -can- read Firefoxes files, and a significant proportion of criminals will think they are safe when they are not.
Hell, I'm not even law enforcement but I still find it obvious how this story is a great advantage for the law enforcement community.
Safari's the worst of them all. (Score:5, Informative)
"Using Safari's new Private Browsing feature, no information about where you visit on the Web, personal information you enter or pages you visit are saved or cached. It's as if you were never there."
My Response (Score:4, Insightful)
Standardizing Bank Robbery (Score:4, Funny)
Allegations in an article over at Police Magazine propose that alternate vehicles such as motorcycles and buses impede bank robbery law enforcement and investigation efforts because they "use different shapes, different numbers of seats, and different logos for the manufacturers that investigators are after", which can "cause trouble for get-away car examiners".
Obviously, only Dodge Chargers, like the "General Lee" should be allowed to criminals, to make them easier to catch.
A theory... (Score:3, Interesting)
After looking over the site [htcia.org], I suspect that "The High Technology Crime Investigation Association (HTCIA)" is a front; it is really a for-profit money-making venture, not a legitimate professional association, as it presents itself. For a genuine professional association, they make too strong an effort to convince us that's what they are. It would work like this: A few guys collect the attendance and membership fees, keeping a big profit for themselves. The fees are paid by governments. The conference attendees, mostly law enforcement officials, receive some stupid advice. Masquerading as a professional organization instead of a for-profit business creates good will, helping them to fleece taxpayers.
The content of the training seminars is especially suspicious. Really, how easy is it to uncover the "secret" history files of "alternative" web browsers? I timed myself, and it took me about 90 seconds using Google to work out some good keywords and find the answer. See the first link [holgermetzger.de] in my google search [google.com].
Something else suspicious about this professional training: Because the source code for Firefox is available for free to the public, which is not the case with Internet Explorer, it should be easier, not more difficult, to uncover where and how Firefox logs history.
You gotta be kidding... (Score:4, Interesting)
That said, I wonder what would prevent someone from creating a wireless fileserver and embedding it behind their drywall. Using an NFSmount or Share, an evildoer's PC wouldn't hold anything evil when the FED's nabbed it.
Realistically I bet it would though - They can do some pretty amazing things with Forensics these days, and I wouldn't be surprised if they could take a ram chip and see previous states of 0's and 1's.
evil! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Quick People! (Score:3, Funny)
I can see it now:
"When you use Firefox, you are supporting terrorism!"
It's the kind of funny that makes you want to laugh and cry simultaneously.
-- n
Cnet is MS Shill (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What about Lynx (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What's a security expert worth? (Score:3, Interesting)