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Thread: Veterans Affairs Laptop Recovered!

  1. #1
    Master-Jedi-Pimps0r & Moderator thehorse13's Avatar
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    Veterans Affairs Laptop Recovered!

    [snip]

    Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson announced Thursday morning that the missing VA laptop computer has been found.

    The computer contains personal information on more than 26 million veterans and military personnel. It was stolen from the home of a VA employee in Montgomery County, Md.

    Nicholson made the announcement just before a hearing of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

    A federal law enforcement official said an unidentified person turned in the laptop computer to FBI agents in Baltimore Wednesday.

    [snip]

    Details:
    http://www.nbc4.com/news/9446094/detail.html
    Our scars have the power to remind us that our past was real. -- Hannibal Lecter.
    Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful. -- John Wooden

  2. #2
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    Brilliant! I can see some big heads rolling here................I must take up knitting

    The analyst is the "lead programmer within the Policy Analysis Service and as such needs access to real Social Security numbers."
    No he doesn't, he just needs sufficient skill to write a little routine to generate them, just like I have for credit card numbers and Sales Tax account numbers? He was bloody lazy, that is all.

    However, he seems to have enough mistrust, animalistic survival instinct, or experience to get written permission? And I would like to bet that he did not get those written permissions from the janitor or the tea lady.

    Crnkovich, a spokeswoman for the Baltimore FBI field office said agents conducted an initial forensic examination of the laptop and external hard drive and concluded the VA data had not been accessed or copied
    What a pathetic shower of retards............how would they hope to know? Surely rule #1 of forensics is to make a witnessed/certified copy that DOES NOT in any way shape or form CHANGE the original media's content ?????????????..........criminals know about forensics as well. Sure look at the file, has it's date changed? no?...............fine, or is it?....................I have software that lets me change the date and other info of any damn file on the box , not to mention that the read or copy process does not normally change the file dates and times.

    I won't even mention the use of Linux tools on Windows data files

    This all seems very "convenient"............ I would demand proof that the administration was not lying to save their a$$ from a $26.5 billion lawsuit.

    Anyways, I think that there is a lot more mileage in this one.

  3. #3
    IT Specialist Ghost_25inf's Avatar
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    I'm Still collecting my $1000.00 dollars.
    S25vd2xlZGdlIGlzIHBvd2VyIQ

  4. #4
    Hopefully something good will come out of all this once the dust settles.
    Better security policy's, better checks put in place to stop this sort of stuff to happen again in the future..

    i wonder how much the forensic's people are getting paid to say that nothing was copied or accessed..

    off course the coverup will start immediatly, i wonder just when did the laptop come to be returned to the Authority's and how long did they wait before announcing that it was returned...

  5. #5
    Master-Jedi-Pimps0r & Moderator thehorse13's Avatar
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    What a pathetic shower of retards............how would they hope to know? Surely rule #1 of forensics is to make a witnessed/certified copy that DOES NOT in any way shape or form CHANGE the original media's content ?????????????..
    My exact response but I went on to say that even a simple disk duplication device, not a 250,000 forensics kit will leave no trace of alteration.

    --Th13
    Our scars have the power to remind us that our past was real. -- Hannibal Lecter.
    Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful. -- John Wooden

  6. #6
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    It seems to me that if it went to a developer he can have real scrambled data. I've worked with HR master Data in a development that gets periodically refreshed with production data. In order to ensure privacey of employees part of the refresh process is a scrambling of the data. SS# for Ted is now assigned to Susan along with Salary information. Scrambling the data exposes you to less risk in a development environment.

    Cheers,
    -D
    If you spend more on coffee than on IT security, you will be hacked. What\'s more, you deserve to be hacked.
    -- former White House cybersecurity adviser Richard Clarke

  7. #7
    A federal law enforcement official said an unidentified person turned in the laptop computer to FBI agents in Baltimore Wednesday.
    So the thief just made $50,000 ....the reward offered according to a report. Nice.

    Cheaper than dolling out that $26 billion, eh?!

  8. #8
    Master-Jedi-Pimps0r & Moderator thehorse13's Avatar
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    So the thief just made $50,000 ....the reward offered according to a report. Nice.
    It's a new business model. Like it?

    --Th13
    Our scars have the power to remind us that our past was real. -- Hannibal Lecter.
    Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful. -- John Wooden

  9. #9
    Dissident 4dm1n brokencrow's Avatar
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    $50G's to the...thief?

    He-heh, is it worth 50 big ones to be on an FBI watchlist? Personally, I prefer to make an honest living.

    The scheisskopf must be desparate.
    “Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.” — Will Rogers

  10. #10
    The ******* Shadow dalek's Avatar
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    I wonder if the $50,000 is legit(red herring) and it wasn't more of an "amnesty" plea, they would have been like flies on sh*t for this, and the poor sod who stole it probably saw a couple of hundred years behind Bubba...
    PC Registered user # 2,336,789,457...

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