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Uh, Jackson? Sorry, that should be a yes. Ever hear of carnivore?
The bottom line is yes, they can. The good news is that it would take the resources of a nation-state and, in the case of LE, a court approved tap.
Another bit of good news is that Jackson would probably not release any logs or IP address´without said court order. But even if he refused, the ISP and hosting service would.
The best news is, that "they" (whoever "they" is) would simply not bother.
Y'all,
This has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with WSG, but it looks so nice - here it is:
http://www.hamar.sk/sphere/
Go check dat shit out!
I posted this on the "Letters to the Editor" section, and at the suggestion of the Editor will repost it here.
Re: Safety on the Internet and cookies.
The Internet is a dangerous place and you never know who may be monitoring your activities. PC software, particularly WINDOWS, is pathetically insecure. Your hard drive may contain many things you would not like others to see, even if you think you deleted it!
I devised a cheap and foolproof method of getting rid of all traces of your Internet surfing from your PC. This also works if you pick up a virus you can't get rid of or when your hard drive crashes.
It is tedious to create but your PC can always be in a pristine state. (Hey! I'm a poet!).
You need to have software that will make a backup of your system to CDR (NERO Burning ROM is the one I use).
1. Take a backup of your hard drive before you start all this, so that if something gets hosed you can always restore to this backup.
2. Copy to a different CDR all of your preferred site addresses and Email address book. I set mine up using WORD so that I can cut and paste the addresses to the action bar and hit "GO". Find a good hiding place for this disk.
3. Perform a FULL reformat your hard drive to clean off everything. NOTE: this may take some time as it erases everything on every track of your HD.
4. Load your WINDOWS software - from scratch.
5. Reinstall all the other applications you use - from scratch (Virus scan, ISP, Word processor, CD player, NERO, etc.).
6. Fire up your Firewall software and set preferences.
7. Log In to your ISP (at this point you have NO cookies(and NO viruses), so you will have to go through the login procedure) and set up your preferences (Click on VIEW and then set up your Internet settings).
8. Open up your Email account (you should not have lost any of your Email or address book).
9. Logoff your ISP. (Your computer is now pristine with basic ISP cookies and NO viruses).
10. Take a backup to CD of your hard drive again. This will be your Start-up set.
11. Test this Start-up set by running it to restore your hard drive including accessing your ISP. If it works OK, destroy the backup you took at step 1 by melting the CDs with a blowtorch to get rid of all previous evidence.
12. You can now cruise the Internet with a modicum of confidence. Every time you think you have too much incriminating stuff on your hard drive, restore to the Start-up set. Remember, every photograph you download and every site you visit can be extracted from your computer by an expert (LE?) unless you periodically wipe it clean! (Most of the time you DELETE something from your hard drive, the software simply changes a flag to say the track that the data was on is free to reuse, but it doesn't physically overwrite the track to remove the data. Tools are available to reset this flag so that the original data can be read again).
13. P.S. A tip on downloading photographs and movies: Never go direct to your hard drive. I use a ZIP 100 mb drive and then copy to CD. After the copy to CD, I delete the files on the ZIP disk and then copy the huge "Program Files" folder to the ZIP disk. This ensures a complete overwrite of every track on the ZIP disk ensuring security.
Jack, Excellant!
I used to use the same technique to build PC's. 20 pc's, all the same hardware all the same image. Any problems...one restore disc!
I never thought to use it for security.
I'm on it!
Thanks,
AL
Always Lookin,
I've worked in the IT field for a long time and have experienced many of those "Duh!" moments when you suddenly realize there was a real simple solution to a problem.
Glad to provide a "Duh!" moment for you :-)
Please feel free to share this technique with any other vulnerable folks you know.
I always laugh at the dumshits who get raided by LE who find illegal pics (CP, etc.) on that person's computer. The reports usually say that LE also found some kind of Hard Disc Cleaner software (which, obviously, didn't work!)
I just need to keep the wife and the boss from finding out my WWW browsing habits (especially THIS site).
Happy Hunting.
Hey, Sporatic does that mean the short answer is still 'no'? :)
Rolly Polly,
It depends on exactly what your personal level of comfort is. For ME it is an acceptable risk, with the precautions I personally take.
Having said that, I think full disclosure is important so each one of may evaluate their own risks.
Cheers,
Sporadic
If you are really paranoid, get a knoppix live cd to do your browsing.
It loads into the ram and doesnt need to even write at all to the HD.
A full fledged linux distro with web browser, email, office suite, etc. It does most of the basic networking for you, given a LAN connection of some sort. IE, with a card, and not a modem.
But you will have to RTFM. I know alot of windows users can't abide that, but that's the way it is.
And of course, you should stop using IE and use Mozilla Firefox on your Windows box, otherwise you most certainly will get that nasty Cool WEb Search and the Porn Dialers.
When Firefox deletes your history, it REALLY deletes it, unlike IE, which as I understand it, has a file somewhere of all hosts visited that it won't erase.
And there's eraser at [url]http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/[/url] to give you a serious clean up that probably will stymie even the FBI from trying to recover your data.
Free. Open Source. Like the Knoppix disk.
Hope this helps!
Nanio,
Yes indeed, in Windows you can't get rid of the '.dat' files. Windows claims it needs them.
But good old DOS is here to help:
Restart in DOS, you get C:\windows>
Type:deltree cookies, click yes
Type:deltree tempor~1, click yes
Same for any folder you want to get rid of, like:
-temp
-history
Restart windows by pushin' cntr+alt+del
Windows will rebuild the folders you removed in DOS, but the .dat files in them are..... empty!
Get yourself a copy of 'eraser' to completely overwrite the empty space on the HD(s) every now and then.
To reduce the amount of space you have to worry about, reduce the size of your C-drive to a minimum, let's say 'what you need +500MB'.
Get a bunch of seperate HD's for the porn:).
As some of you have noticed, the International guide now has a fee to view photos and so on.
Let's just say that I used my credit card. Does anyone know where credit information is stored ?
If this site was to ever come under fire, would the FBI and other agencies have access to such information and persue a presentable prosecution of some extent ?
-007
[QUOTE=Freeler]Nanio,
Yes indeed, in Windows you can't get rid of the '.dat' files. Windows claims it needs them.
But good old DOS is here to help:
Restart in DOS, you get C:\windows>
Type:deltree cookies, click yes
Type:deltree tempor~1, click yes
Same for any folder you want to get rid of, like:
-temp
-history
Restart windows by pushin' cntr+alt+del
Windows will rebuild the folders you removed in DOS, but the .dat files in them are..... empty!
Get yourself a copy of 'eraser' to completely overwrite the empty space on the HD(s) every now and then.
To reduce the amount of space you have to worry about, reduce the size of your C-drive to a minimum, let's say 'what you need +500MB'.
Get a bunch of seperate HD's for the porn:).[/QUOTE]Another way is to use [url=http://www.stevengould.org/software/cleanup/download.html]CleanUp![/url] ... a great free utility that has become a standard install on all the systems I build.
Some good information here. However.....
There are some VERY savy forensics programs now availible to the general public. IMHO only one true way to erase your pc. A strong and I mean STRONG magnetic field.
Yes you can re-format your hard drive. Yes this will delete whatever files you have. BUT the file fragments will still exist, kind of like the old ghost images on TV's from the 80's. I have heard that you could reformat a hardrive 12 or more times and still be able to recover some of the files.
Fire is also another option...lol
I've been using HistoryKill for years. Everything seems to run smoother once I get rid of all the things it deletes. Any info on how effective HK is?
[QUOTE=Kindashy3]Some good information here. However.....
There are some VERY savy forensics programs now availible to the general public. IMHO only one true way to erase your pc. A strong and I mean STRONG magnetic field.
Yes you can re-format your hard drive. Yes this will delete whatever files you have. BUT the file fragments will still exist, kind of like the old ghost images on TV's from the 80's. I have heard that you could reformat a hardrive 12 or more times and still be able to recover some of the files.
Fire is also another option...lol[/QUOTE]
My friend in Boston who teaches CS just ran a class experiment where his post doc students reassembled data from a drive that had been wiped 30 times. The only way to be completely sure that a hard drive is no longer readable is to melt down the lifters into liquid. Of couse having one computer for business and another for everything else is highly advisable.
Having more than one regedit program helps out a bit too.
BR
[QUOTE=Captain Stiffy]I've been using HistoryKill for years. Everything seems to run smoother once I get rid of all the things it deletes. Any info on how effective HK is?[/QUOTE]
Just about any history editor will do fine, but not by itself.
This is my main bag of tricks as far as programs I use to maintain security.
There are more, plus a proxy, a hardware firewall, a software firewall, McAfee, spybot s&d and external, dedicated hard drives.
BR