Computer with e-mail evidence may have been damaged (NJ corruption)

injersey.com ^ | 5-4-2003 | SANDY MCCLURE

[Cagey]

TRENTON -- Employees at the state Parole Board and the Attorney General's Office are talking about how state investigators, who are looking into whether the governor's office was involved in the parole of reputed mobster Angelo Prisco, damaged a computer believed to contain evidence in the case, sources have told the Gannett State Bureau.

[Cagey]

Okay, so they dropped the computer/server. How does dropping a computer damage what's on the hard drive? This seems very improbable to me.

Any one with tech background care to comment here?

[Cagey]

More McGreevey slime.

[CHICAGOFARMER]

Send it to me.

I know someone who can retrieve the data.

So does the FBI.

[Fred Mertz]

Investigators reported the following day that nothing could be retrieved from the computer server, sources said.

Yeah, right.

Any techies wish to comment on government corruption?

[Unknown Freeper]

So this file server never was backed up? Yeah, uh huh. And dropping a server does not mean you can't get data off the drive. Do they think everyone learns about computers from AOL? Try again McGreedy.

[meatloaf]

Even after erased and written over, data can be retrieved. The only sure way of ensuring data cannot be retrieved is to place the hard drive in a furnace and reduce it to molten metal.

[meatloaf]

Even after erased and written over, data can be retrieved. The only sure way of ensuring data cannot be retrieved is to place the hard drive in a furnace and reduce it to molten metal.

[Glenn]

Any techies wish to comment on government corruption?

My only comment is this:

Send me the damn thing. I'll get their data for them. And I prefer a temperate climate for my relocation in the witness protection program. And I want my name to be really cool and end in a vowel.

[Hodar]

When two state investigators picked up the computer server, believed to contain e-mails and other documents related to the case, from the Parole Board the week of April 7, they dropped it into a vehicle so hard that parts flew off, sources said. Investigators reported the following day that nothing could be retrieved from the computer server, sources said.

They dropped it into a vehicle so hard that the hard drive was damaged? How far did they drop it? 20+ stories? I would suggest that the responsbile parties split the bill, after they send the computer here:

http://www.drivesavers.com/

[Glenn]

Even after erased and written over, data can be retrieved.

If you do it properly, there will be no data to retrieve. It's a myth that the data is still out there in some ghost-like fashion.

[Cagey]

Will formatting the drive erase all data? And, I've heard of utilities that will do a total wipe of the data that one chooses. I think Norton is one vendor who makes such a utility.

But, the thing is these crooks in Trenton are claiming that by dropping the computer the data was destroyed and that just doesn't ring true to me.

[AppyPappy]

Bull. They dropped it after the wiped the disk

[AppyPappy]

Yup. I bet they overwrote the data with 0's.

[Glenn]

But, the thing is these crooks in Trenton are claiming that by dropping the computer the data was destroyed and that just doesn't ring true to me.

Your instincts are right on. The bits don't fall off. I've personally witnessed a chemical solution that when applied to a magnetic surface like tape or a computer disk will reveal the binary data in a visible format which is then read by a highly specialized optical scanner. It's amazing what's out there.

[meatloaf]

Until a few months ago, I would have agreed with you. Go to slashdot and do a search. A topic on that site referenced the technical article describing the technique. As long as the disks can be removed from the hard drive and examined, the data can be retrieved ... even after reformating.

FWIW, the everyday hacker won't have the equipment.

[yevgenie]

Not a myth!
Yes, it is true that you CAN repeatedly rewrite over the disk surface. The problem is that many HDD's are not quite so precise in the movements of the head and the platter. Sometimes this results in a shift in the position of the head over the platter and there may be a residual charge left on the surface even after someone has "correctly" attempted to overwrite the data.
-Yev (computer security specialist)

[thegreatbeast]

I don't have that kind of tech backgroud but I am very sceptical that they (NJ state authorities) couldn't go to the FBI or an outside vendor and retrieve anything from a HD that had NOT itself been physically altered.
This is just NJ "grease" not working! These guys have had numerous cracks at destroying the same evidence and failed. Talk about the Dumbing Down of America! Geesh!
Talk about incompetent government; these guys won't stay bought!

[cryptical]

Formatting doesn't help, and overwriting isn't foolproof.

It depends on what your threat model is and how much it's worth to your adversaries to recover your data.

E-mail traverses several machines to get to you typically, so even securing the data on your mailbox machine may not be good enough.

End-to-end encryption works. It's a little extreme for most people, and there are all sorts of gotchas in implementation to worry about, but if you have the need you can afford the solution.

[Glenn]

The problem is that many HDD's are not quite so precise

With the density and sophistication of controllers, the odds of what you describe are pretty long in this day and age. Don't you think?

[Pyrion]

It rarely does, unless the computer was still powered up at the time of the dropping. In which case it undoubtedly crashed the read-write heads on the hard drive and scratched the hell out of the drive platters.

I fail to see why they're bitching. Just another couple thousand bucks down the drain and a data recovery center can get that data back. :)