NSA searches for advanced data mining tech

The National Security Agency (NSA) visited Silicon Valley this month on the hunt for private sector technology to beef up its already formidable snooping and signals intelligence portfolio. Data mining technologies to search for connections between seemingly unrelated snippets of

Cybercrime Summit, Feb 27 – Mar 3, 2006

Originally known as the Southeast Cyber Crime Summit, the new and improved CyberCrime Summit starts its fourth year in existence. This is due to the growth and realization that the summit reaches beyond the Southeastern U.S. The CyberCrime Summit attracts

UK rapped on data retention law

Britain’s net industry has named the UK presidency of the EU as its villain of the year. The Internet Service Providers’ Association (Ispa) singled out the UK for its role in pushing for Europe-wide data retention laws. The laws, requiring

Data Retention Directive endorsed by Ministers

The controversial Data Retention Directive received its final seal of approval on Tuesday, when Ministers at the Justice and Home Affairs Council adopted the Directive with a qualified majority. Irish and Slovak Ministers voted against the measure. In general terms,

Nowhere to hide

Be careful what you try to deny is the message from Ed Wilding, particularly if files retrieved from electronic devices have your name all over them. The forensic investigation of data held on computers, laptops, cellular telephones, PDAs and other

Washington Post fails to protect Deep Throat from metadata!

The Washington Post, famous for hiding the name of its Deep Throat source during the Watergate scandal, might have accidentally revealed the name of one of its sources in a less important yarn about a hacker…the article ran a doctored

Are non technical juries keeping criminals at large?

In England and Wales the only qualifications required of a jury member to be eligible to appear in a court of law are that they are registered on the electoral roll, aged between 18 and 70 and have lived in

Forensic experts may testify that CA executives erased data

Former CA chairman and chief executive Sanjay Kumar and another CA executive obstructed justice by attempting to erase evidence from computers after the federal government began investigating accounting fraud at the software company, prosecutors say in a letter to defense

Without a trace: Documents and deleted data

Documents tend to collect hidden data, which takes two forms. One is metadata, or data about a document, which is appended by the program, often unnoticed by the user. Then there’s data that was part of the original document but

Guidance – The Next Generation of Write Block Technologies

On February 22nd, Guidance Software will host an online seminar that will explore the next generation of write block technologies. One of the first rules taught in computer investigations is to assure that the original media is not altered, and

Anonymity on a Disc

To many privacy geeks, it’s the holy grail – a totally anonymous and secure computer so easy to use you can hand it to your grandmother and send her off on her own to the local Starbucks. That was the

Today’s FBI: Computer forensics, digital fingerprints

When you think of crime scenes and gathering evidence, perhaps DNA and fingerprints come to mind. But there’s another science which is helping law enforcement agencies like HPD find and convict criminals. It is the growing field of forensic computing.

Judge: OK To Look For Evidence In City Databases

A Becker County District Court judge has said an independent computer forensics expert can look for evidence in Moorhead, Minn. (US) city databases that police officers have to fulfill monthly quotas for traffic citations… More (wcco.com)

Sebek 3: tracking the attackers, part two

In part one of this series, we discussed the current Sebek development and its integration with GenIII Honeynets. In this article, we take it a step further and focus on best practices to deploy Sebek inside a GenIII Honeynet, as

Red Cliff Consulting LLC Rebrands as MANDIANT

The information security firm Red Cliff Consulting LLC has renamed itself MANDIANT, reflecting a major evolution in the company’s mission over the past year – a year that saw 150% revenue growth, the development of free software tools, and the

Computer records play large role in gathering evidence

Investigators are relying on computer records to trace Neil Entwistle’s steps in the days before he allegedly shot his wife, Rachel, and 9-month-old daughter, Lillian Rose. As computers play an ever-greater role in everyday life, they are becoming increasingly important