Colorado Woman Ordered to Decrypt Laptop in Bank Fraud Case - Page 4

97FormulaWS-6 · 01-25-2012, 11:37 AM

Data can be recovered in almost all cases, only way to not have it happen is to literally destroy the platens via melting them into liquid.

An acquaintance of mine does micro-engineering data recovery for the justice department and other entities he's not able to name. If someone wants the data bad enough, they can get it.

That being said... I'm on the fence with this decision, I can see both sides, but I'm not sure which I agree with.

This ad is not displayed to registered members.
Register your free account today and become a member on CamaroZ28.com!

bombebomb · 01-25-2012, 11:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 97FormulaWS-6

Data can be recovered in almost all cases, only way to not have it happen is to literally destroy the platens via melting them into liquid.

An acquaintance of mine does micro-engineering data recovery for the justice department and other entities he's not able to name. If someone wants the data bad enough, they can get it.

That being said... I'm on the fence with this decision, I can see both sides, but I'm not sure which I agree with.

Question, if you melt it, then recycle it all back into a set of platters, could you recover anything?

MyShibbyZ28 · 01-25-2012, 04:03 PM

There are ways to make sure no one gets data again.

For one her laptop could have multiple layers of encryption. In fact my personal computer has 3 in the event that anyone stole it. Like the police said, it would take forever to crack it given the possible circumstances. One encryption method is hard as hell to crack, let alone more than one.

Others have mentioned this too. Doing a 21+ pass DBAN will definitely wipe any trace, especially traces that the police are going to have means of getting back.

Z28Roxy · 01-25-2012, 04:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MyShibbyZ28

There are ways to make sure no one gets data again.

For one her laptop could have multiple layers of encryption. In fact my personal computer has 3 in the event that anyone stole it. Like the police said, it would take forever to crack it given the possible circumstances. One encryption method is hard as hell to crack, let alone more than one.

Others have mentioned this too. Doing a 21+ pass DBAN will definitely wipe any trace, especially traces that the police are going to have means of getting back.

Why would you bother doing DBAN 21 times when you can open up the case and physically destroy the platters?

ttop1986 · 01-25-2012, 04:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Z28Roxy

d
Anyway. Seriously. What a dumbass. First of all, the po po can break into it with a decrypter.

Not likely. PGP is some serious security. It would take an insane amount of time for them to brute force it, even using a GPU. There are calculators out there to estimate brute forcing attempts. The only way to decrypt a PGP disk is by knowing the PGP passphrase, hence the judge ordering her to do it. You could have a passphrase of over 150 characters if you wanted, or you could write a couple sentences with weird characters thrown in. It's some cool stuff.

bombebomb · 01-25-2012, 05:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ttop1986

Not likely. PGP is some serious security. It would take an insane amount of time for them to brute force it, even using a GPU. There are calculators out there to estimate brute forcing attempts. The only way to decrypt a PGP disk is by knowing the PGP passphrase, hence the judge ordering her to do it. You could have a passphrase of over 150 characters if you wanted, or you could write a couple sentences with weird characters thrown in. It's some cool stuff.

I wonder how long it would take a super computer. Even better.... I wonder how long it would take a GPU super computer to crack it. So many questions I may never have the answer to.

Dave K · 01-25-2012, 05:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eyeoutthere

It makes sense that the 5th amendment doesn't apply here. They had a warrant to search her computer. She shouldn't be able to interfere with the execution of that warrant.

The warrent entitles them to search her machine... it doesn't mean she has to do ANYTHING to aid them in that search. I imagine this one will end up being a 5th ammendment issue. I don't like the idea of a criminal getting out of something... but the 5th ammendment is there for exactly this situation it seems to me.

And in the end this won't accomplish what the judge wants it to long term... if he forces her to comply you'll soon see a version of PGP with a kill phrase - which will act like it's unlocking but actually do a secure wipe... or a 'camo' phrase that acts like it's unlocking but instead shows a dummy archive of innocuous files. There are already 'stealth' encryption schemes, where the encrypted volume is completely hidden.

The government should never be able to coerce someone into being their own prosecutor, the Constitution says it and I think it's a pretty smart idea.

MyShibbyZ28 · 01-25-2012, 06:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Z28Roxy

Why would you bother doing DBAN 21 times when you can open up the case and physically destroy the platters?

I was thinking of having to actually provide the computer back to the police. If you physically destroy it they could probably nail you with obstruction or something related.

I guess the easiest solution would be to go buy a completely new drive and hide/burn/microwave/bury/melt/whatever the original and never mention it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave K

And in the end this won't accomplish what the judge wants it to long term... if he forces her to comply you'll soon see a version of PGP with a kill phrase - which will act like it's unlocking but actually do a secure wipe... or a 'camo' phrase that acts like it's unlocking but instead shows a dummy archive of innocuous files. There are already 'stealth' encryption schemes, where the encrypted volume is completely hidden.

There are ways to do exactly this without the need for PGP to have a killphrase feature.