Stolen VA Laptop Recovered

lancejjj writes "Remember how the VA was pinning the theft of 26.5 million veterans' personal records on a hard working-but-renegade employee whose laptop was stolen? Surprise! It turns out that the employee had written permission to bring the sensitive data home. Fortunately, the laptop has been recovered. It is still unclear how the laptop was recovered, or if any of the veterans' personal data was leaked."

Comments

Yeah, Fooooound

[Goblez]

Or a copy of it for publicity sake.

Nothing taken

[paganizer]

I believe it said on the FBI's report that it looked like the data had not been looked at.

Re:Nothing taken

[Tackhead]

> I believe it said on the FBI's report that it looked like the data had not been looked at.

"No way!"
"Yes, way. Looked at the report and it looks like the report says it looks like the data had not been looked at."
"Who's Wei?"
"'Yes way', not 'yes, Wei"
"Who?"
"Not Hu, not Wei."
"I dunno!"
"THIRD BASE!"

Re:Nothing taken

[treeves]

I for one am relieved that the data was not accessed, since I am a veteran who received a letter saying that I might be subject to identity theft as a result of this incident.
They gave us all a years worth of ID theft tracking service at a cost to the gov't of $(several millions?).
If a class action law suit against the VA for this debacle is successful it will cost them a lot more than that.

I am more than a little annoyed that they gave the guy permission to take the data home, and now they are firing him for having done so.
In spite of my feelings, I hope such a lawsuit fails, since it will only hurt those who rely on the VA's funding for their health care, etc.
The people who allowed this to happen certainly aren't going to give themselves a cut in pay!

Re:Nothing taken

[pete6677]

They need to fire all of the morons who made this possible in the first place. It's hard to say which is worse, having no data security or not even knowing if your data is secure.

Re:Nothing taken

[crowemojo]

Ok, the best you could possibly do is try and reconstruct when the computer was turned on or logged into. At best, you can say that; since the laptop had been taken, it had not been logged into. Even then, that is no assurance that the data was not copied, since the drive could have been taking out and copied.

There is no reliable forensic technique to determine beyond doubt that data has not been read. Imagine if you had left a page with notes in a public, high traffic area. When you found that page a day later, how would you go about determining if anyone had looked at it?

Re:Nothing taken

[hazem]

Do you really believe them when they say the data was not accessed? Ignoring the fact that the data can be accessed with no evidence left on the drive. You're a veteran, and you still believe what the government tells you when it's good news for them?

The real fault lies with the credit reporting/monitoring companies.

They have created a system where it's easy for anyone to get credit in another person's name. Their solution, of course, is to pay them to monitor your credit in case someone tries to do it.

The data is not very valuable for most ID theives if they cannot open up instant credit. So, the "solution" is to for the VA to pay the very companies that make it easy to get instant credit for monitoring services.

What a racket.

The easiest first step is to require those agencies to allow every person to put a credit freeze on their credit records. This would stop the instant credit and at the same time would stop a vast majority of the ID theft going on.

Those very same companies have lobbyist to prevent this, of course.

Re:Nothing taken

[TubeSteak]

Do you really believe them when they say the data was not accessed?

FBI Analysis:
Start ---> Documents ---> Recent Documets

FBI Analyst #1: Doesn't seem like anyone looked at the file.
FBI Analyst #2: I concur

FBI Official: We are pleased to announce that it does not seem that anyone accessed the records in question.

Re:Nothing taken

[cait56]

I don't see how the credit reporting/monitoring companies can fix this.

To me the problem is very simple. If I lose my keys, I don't put a "key watch" on my door to see if someone attempts to use the lost keys. I change the locks on the door and get new keys.

If the confidentiality of my social security number is lost then I need to get a new social security number.

Re:Nothing taken

[swattz101]

Yeah, I'm sure they at least looked at the database file, and looked at the 'last accessed date'. {/snide remark}

In actuality, they probably ran some sort of forsenics tool against the drive and preliminary investigation says it probably was not accessed. But my question is, is there a way to track cloaing of a drive. What's to say that whoever had it didn't make a bit-by-bit clone that can't be traced. Granted, I get the feeling that the dumba$$ who stole the computer may not have had the knowledge to do that, but as a vetern and a network administrator, I wouldn't bet my identy on it. I will still take advantage of the credit monitoring when it comes out.

Re:Nothing taken

[nolife]

What forensic tools is that?
Is there any way in hell to determine when a read head moves over a piece of data? If there is (which I do not see how), how could it determine with any resolution of when that head passed over the data? One week, one month, one hour ago etc.. What ever magical thing they messure would have to decay away over time with some consistancy to determine WHEN it was last read.

On that note, boot up with Knoppix, mount hda1 read only (which is the default), mount a network share through lin neighborhood and copy \mnt\hda1 to \home\user\mounts\server\share. Shut off laptop and remove Knoppix cd. You can do that whole process in minutes and all with a gui if you'd like! We do that exact process at least once a week from tanked XP laptops that we need data from.

To get back to reality, if Joe random stole that laptop and was playing with it, he would probably not have the desire and knowledge to do the Knoppix thing or really even care about the actual data on the laptop at all. Someone specifically targetting this VA employee and that data could easily do it.

Re:Nothing taken

[mpe]

They need to fire all of the morons who made this possible in the first place. It's hard to say which is worse, having no data security or not even knowing if your data is secure.

Where would you put them all? These people probably number in the millions, since they include everyone who thinks that a SSN is anything other than a personal name.

Data Wasn't Accessed

[Shadow Wrought]

According to the FBI as reported by Reuters. The FBI said that the DB hadn't been accessed since the date it was stolen. Keep in mind, too that laptop thefts are no different than any other and the vast bulk are crimes of opportunity. So it most likely that the laptop was just at the worng place at the wrong time and the tweaker responsible had no idea as to its value.

Re:Data Wasn't Accessed

[grassy_knoll]

It does seem that this was a random theft, not a targeted attempt to steal the data.

However, how does the FBI know the data wasn't accessed?

Re:Data Wasn't Accessed

[ewhac]

The data probably wasn't accessed. If the thief knew what they had, and was at all clever, they could have pulled the drive, performed a raw sector copy, and put it back. Poof! No date changes. I'm sure the FBI forensics team will be checking for this possibility.

Schwab

Re:Data Wasn't Accessed

[neonprimetime]

You trust Microsoft Windows "Last Accessed Date" on files, right? I mean there's absolutely positivity without a doubt no way no how no possible method of changing that "Last Accessed Date".

Re:Data Wasn't Accessed

[bcat24]

Or using a system that doesn't even touch the last accessed date in the first place.

Re:Data Wasn't Accessed

[hazem]

You don't even have to pull the drive.

Just boot with knoppix, or some other bootable linux on a cd and do something like:

dd if=/dev/hda |gzip -9 |ssh -l someuser somemachine.com "dd of=stolendrivebackup.gz"

Re:Data Wasn't Accessed

[pluther]

I think it unlikely that the VA depended on the "Last Accessed Date" when they made their claim that the data hadn't been stolen.

Given what we've seen so far in the case, it's more likely that they carefully scanned it, determined the data was still there, and therefore must not have been stolen.

I'm sure it's safe

[jeffmeden]

There is no way the thief who had it thought to himself "Hmm all these VA logos, some huge files with a bunch of names and 9 digit numbers. I obviously have nothing important here, I should just return this to the rightful owner." I mean it's not like this was all over the news or anything. Where would he get an idea like 'steal the identities of 26 million veterans'??? I know I can sleep a little easier (mostly because I was never in the armed services). On a more serious note, why aren't the headlines reading "VA wrongly accused employee of negligence, prepared to take full blame"? That seems to be the gist of this event.

Re:I'm sure it's safe

[LiquidMind]

I received one of those official letters in the mail from the VA stating the jist of what the original news article talked about. Although I wasn't surprised that I got it, it still made me feel uneasy knowing that someone out there has mine (and countless others') information. I'm relieved to see that the laptop made it back...whether or not my information is still out there is another story....

Re:I'm sure it's safe

[Sycraft-fu]

1) The theif probably didn't even check. People steal laptops to sell them, not to mine their data since 99.9% have no valuable data.

2) Identity theft on a large scale is nearly worthless because it's news. People get notified accounts get watched, you get caught if you use it. It's the small stuff where the harm happens. You get one person's identity and they don't know so you can abuse it for a couple months.

The US just needs data privacy laws

[bunions]

Seriously. Attention any/all US federal legislators reading this: just mimic the EU on this one. It's a no-brainer and will win you the all-important geek vote.

How it got recovered?

[88NoSoup4U88]

It is still unclear how the laptop was recovered

They probably just put up a blog. ;)

TrueCrypt

[Spy der Mann]

After discovering truecrypt, I realized how easy it is to have your sensitive data secured. Provided that the laptop doesn't contain spyware, only the person with password to the truecrypt volume can read it. After it's turned off, nobody else can.

And the hidden volumes feature in truecrypt makes it much harder to steal the data (not only you'd need the normal volume password, you'd also need the hidden volume password - IF there is a hidden volume, which you don't know).

Re:TrueCrypt

[VertigoAce]

That isn't the purpose of the hidden volume. You only need the hidden volume password to access that volume. The actual purpose is so that if you are compelled to give access to the encrypted data you can just give out the outer volume's password. Used properly, there's no way to tell if there is a hidden volume or not, so no one can compel you to give the password for that volume. So basically, store some semi-sensitive data in the outer volume and your very sensitive data in the hidden volume. Maybe also create some volumes without hidden sections so you have plausible deniability.

Re:TrueCrypt

[e40]

Problem is that if the hidden volume is mounted and the laptop suspended... does Truecrypt unmount in this case? (In other words, does the user have to remount of resume?) If not, it's the same as not having any encryption at all.

Re:TrueCrypt

[citizenklaw]

Disagree. On the preferences, TrueCrypt enables you to Auto-Dismount the encrypted partition when a user logs off, when the screen saver is launched, the computer enters power saving mode, if no data is read written for x amount of time, etc. You can even tell the program to force a dismount even if the volume contains open files/directories

My settings are simple: dismount when I log off and when the computer goes into power saving mode. I like this little app.

That's what happens...

[tacarat]

I'd like to know how they verified that none of the data was accessed. Granted, it's highly possible that the thief probably had no idea what was on the laptop or may have been too scared to try selling that data, but I'd like to know that somebody with tech skills did the check. "Last modified" date doesn't mean the files weren't copied, and we never heard about anything else being stolen from the victem. There was a theft of Tricare (military medical provider... of sorts) server hard drives from a server room a few years ago. The geniuses said it wasn't a targeted data theft, but rather the theives had the intent to steal the hard drives themselves.

Yeah... sure.

New requirements for protection of Personal Data.

[Chyeburashka]

Meanwhile, the Whitehouse published this memo last Friday. It's about time, IMHO.

Why real data?

[JayDot]

One of the articles quoted the permission granting documents, saying that the analyst needed real SSNs for his work. I don't understand why that would be the case. Couldn't they have generated a fake list, verified that no two numbers were alike, and assigned a bunch of random names? It seems like the whole issue could have been eliminated from the start by doing this. Also, it's just shameful the way a bunch of middle-management types are trying to shaft the analyst when he's had written permission for ~4 years.

Re:Why real data?

[HardCase]

Also, it's just shameful the way a bunch of middle-management types are trying to shaft the analyst when he's had written permission for ~4 years.

Yeah, just ask the assistant secretary (Dennis Duffy) and the deputy assistant secretary (Michael McLendon). Oh wait, they've all been fired.

-h-

Oh it matters!

[jeffmeden]

Because one method involves Chuck Norris and immediate death for the thief. The other involves Charlie Sheen and about two hours of pouty looks and deadpan humor. We owe it to history to properly document this event!

Re:If he keeps his job

[JayDot]

Why? He had at least three written memos given express permission for him to do what he did. The problem here wasn't with the worker, it's with the policies and directors that signed the memos.

Bah...

[citizenklaw]

Nothing appeared to be copied? Bah. What's keeping a would be data thief to boot up with a Linux distro, copy at will and shutdown the computer

.

I use a utility called TrueCrypt on my computer. I don't use a Mac (I would if I had the money), but I think the Mac has a utility (built in to the OS to boot) that let's you encrypt the contents of your home folder. This utility (TrueCrypt) enables me to reserve a chunk of space on my HD and encrypt it. I'm pretty confident that if my laptop gets stolen, the data will be *reasonably* safe.

This is just a mix of bad infosec policies and worse OS.

Re:Bah...

[klmth]

You must be joking. 2^256 is simply too large to ever be crackable. 2^256 translates to more states than there are estimated to be atoms in the universe; in other words, you will have to use the entire universe to build your computer. There is no possible way that AES or any other block cipher will ever be brute forced. So that leaves you with password security as the weakest link. In truecrypt, your passphrase and keyfiles are used to scramble the key. Using a unique file on a USB dongle as the key and randomized letters as the password, you will be safe from any brute force attempts.

Of course, there might be some weaknesses with the AES algorithm, but to date no such attack has been found, at does not seem likely to surface.

Re:If he keeps his job

[955301]

Oh no, the best thing they could do is let him keep the job. He's the least likely person in the US to do this again. It would be different if he stole it himself.

I do.

[WebHostingGuy]

I got the letter stating my info was in there.

(Although I saw this article earlier elsewhere.)

Load of crap

[NynexNinja]

It sounds like a coverup to me. They never found that laptop, and if they did, it wasn't the one that was missing. I bet after a whole bunch of politicians got in hot water over this story when it first broke, they quietly orchestrated a nice plan to sweep this mess back under the carpet where it belongs! While this case quietly goes away, the real issues (data security, privacy of sensitive data, etc, etc, etc) do not have to be addressed.

Another whacked summary

[HardCase]

The employee had permission to access social security numbers. The employee had permission to take a laptop home. The employee had permission to use database software at home.

The VA still contends that the employee did not have permission to put the social security numbers on the computer and take it home.

Look at the timeline. He gets permission to access SSNs in February. He gets permission to take a laptop home in September. Sometime during the year he got permission to use a database program at home. It still sounds to me like he took a little personal initiative to take the SSN database home.

Still, the whole affair was handled pretty damn poorly, particularly the delay in reporting it, among other things.

-h-

Re:Yeah - laws that let the gov't have all access

[bunions]

Data privacy laws aren't there to keep the gov't from snooping into your stuff, it's to keep companies from trading your private data, or even keeping it on file in many instances.

It's deeply flawed nevertheless

[Pig Hogger]

The system is deeply flawed if it is possible to steal someone's identity with a mere handful of private information.

What is needed is a far more positive identification system. Granted, it might be a piss-off to not be able to get instant credit to purchase that new thingamabob, but as things reach unmanageable proportions, something has to be done.

Ethical Hacking Rule no.1

[Frightening]

Never, EVER steal a piece of hardware for info without returning it(after taking the info).

It will be interesting to see the public's reaction when 26.5 million SSN are posted tommorow on a blog.

That's how cargo theft works

[Kadin2048]

Actually you don't have to have your tinfoil hat on too tight to believe that.

The situation you describe is not at all unlike how the mafia cargo-theft operations run (or used to run...the people I know are all ex-OCTF types). Basically they'd find some truck driver who had a gambling problem, and make him a deal: he parks his truck at a certain rest area on a certain night, and goes into the restaurant to have dinner. When he gets out, his truck is missing. Sometimes they'd even arrange it so that the cargo in question that night would be particularly high-value (load of VCRs, whatever), or easy to fence merchandise.

The key question in the data-theft is whether or not U.S. organized crime is really involved in large-scale identity theft, to the point where they would have wanted to get their hands on a laptop full of data that badly. If you think that they are, then the whole scenario doesn't seem totally implausible.

I'm fairly confident, however, that the FBI is probably looking down this angle -- it's not really that hard a thing to imagine, so I expect that they're going through the employee's finances and everything else, seeing if there's some way he could have been compromised.

Re:As Gomer Pyle used to say...

[__aaclcg7560]

Not sure if it was ineptitude or the bureaucracy that prevented the site admins from making changes without the permission of some central office but, this type of security is mostly to blame for the recent incident.

If access to the network is being granted by Active Directory, giving the user access to the local admin account is relatively OK for them updating software/hardware on their machine since that account can't get on the network. That's how the machines at my current job are set up and I wouldn't be surprised if this practice is widespread. This is a "flaw" that's supposed to be fixed in Windows Vista.

I smell a fish...

[indigence_is_best]

My data just happened to be on that hard drive, so I am a little upset about it to say the least. We in the armed forces have been told that the individual was definitely NOT supposed to take that data home. It even says so on the VA website reguarding this incident. http://www.firstgov.gov/veteransinfo.shtml If he had written authorization to do so, then that is a completely different story, and all of us that were affected should be even more angry. There are procedures in place for bringing ANY government property home; whether it be DATA or PHYSICAL media. Especially privacy act information.

So which is it? He was or he wasn't allowed to? It is a bit too convenient for my taste that the laptop was recovered so magically and with the data intact.

This kind of back-and-forth "truth" on these kinds of issues gets very old very fast.

Smells fishy...

Re:If he keeps his job

[Frightening]

Excellent thinking. I believe the same applies to airlines with accidents...according to laws of probablility alone, it is almost impossible for an airplane crash to occur more than once with the same airlines during the period of, say, a month. They become the safest airlines on earth after an accident.

Load of tinfoil.

[ScentCone]

It sounds like a coverup to me. They never found that laptop, and if they did, it wasn't the one that was missing

Does your specially-formed tinfoil apparel help you to know these facts? The scoop is that someone turned it into the Baltimore FBI office, and they're keeping it quiet because the $50k reward was part of the picture. Their forensics people were the first ones to look at the machine, and that's what they do all day.

More likely whatever ever idiot looted the house and took the portable fencables really didn't know what to do with it, and probably saw the government markings on the machine later. Not something you can put on eBay or take to a pawn shop. And people like that are in the habit of asking their equally ass-hattish what friends to do with something like that. Obviously one of the more enterprising ones is looking to turn it into $50k.

Amusing aside

[liegeofmelkor]

Ok, I might be in the minority here, but I'm assuming that this was no conspiracy or well-organized hit to access veterans' SSN's. I'm guessing the perpetrator was some dumb teens or twenties punk who broke into the house looking for something he could sell for a couple bucks. This run-of-the-mill type would barely be able to use the laptop he stole to check email and play solitaire, let alone transfer files without leaving a trace of file access. Imagine his face, when flipping through the TV, he sees an article on the computer sitting in his trunk and thinks, "Hey, that looks like the place I jacked last night... wait a minute, that IS the place I hit! National news! FBI investigation! $50,000 reward for my ass ... crap!" Ahhh, priceless!

TrueCrypt needs admin privileges; now what?

[KWTm]

I, too, am pleased with TrueCrypt; the cross-platform feature allows removable drives to be interchanged between my (k)Ubuntu Dapper systems and my wife's Win2k system (she refuses to use WinXP). Finally we can easily store something on a CF card, pull it out and not worry about data being stolen!

Unfortunately, this does not work on our laptops at work; I am being coerced to use WinXP at work (damn you!) without admin privileges, and TrueCrypt refuses to install without admin privileges.

Does anyone know a workaround for this? I recognize that it's probably unlikely; if it works without admin privileges, it's probably not that secure.

Before anyone suggests that I ask the IT department of our firm: I already asked if it was okay to install certain programs. "Like what?" they asked. "Firefox," I said. "What's Firefox?" they asked. So that pretty much nixes that idea.

I did notice that GPG and WinPT install okay without needing admin privileges, so I am able to have *some* form of encryption, but it is non-ideal for various reasons.

Btw, for those of you using Ubuntu Dapper, here's a web page on how to install it easily. I ended up compiling (pretty much my first time compiling anything), and it was easier than I thought.

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=19936 7&highlight=truecrypt

There's a big catch to the offer of free credit

[alfredo]

checks for affected veterans. bush is going to take money out of food stamps and education to pay for it.

He's not going to cut any of the huge tax cut he gave his billionaire buddies. Kids will have to pay for it.

What an asshole!

I do not believe for one minute that they found the laptop.

Re:Please don't re-enlist me

[zipn00b]

My letter said something about the IRS helped with the mailing or provided the addresses - I don't remember exactly. Interestingly enough though from what I heard about it I'm probably not in that group as I'm just a bit older than the main group involved. I guess though they were covering all bases to make sure they didn't miss anybody. Oh well maybe someboyd will steal my ID and FIX my credit :)