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Commodore 64 Confuses Austrian Police
toomanyairmiles writes, "It seems that Wolfgang Priklopil, the communications technician who kidnapped Austrian pre-teen Natascha Kampusch, relied on a Commodore 64 as his primary machine. Interestingly this is presenting some problems to the Austrian computer forensics people. Major General Gerhard Lang of the Federal Criminal Investigations Bureau told reporters it would 'complicate investigators' efforts' and would be difficult to transfer the files to modern computers 'without loss.' Could this be the latest in the criminal world's security strategy? Can we expect to see Spectrums, Archimedes, and Atari STs turning up in police investigations soon?"
Could this be the latest in the criminal world's security strategy? Can we expect to see Spectrums, Archimedes, and Atari STs turning up in police investigations soon?
Um, no. This was an aberration; nothing more, even if its use for those reasons was deliberate on his part.
But here's an actual question:
I can absolutely understand and appreciate that people value some of the features and functionality of things like the Commodore 64 and Newton, and many other machines that were considered to be state-of-the-art in their time.
But why would someone go out of their way to continue to use it? I can understand practical and pragmatic answers like "It's still functional for me" or "I just like it better and I haven't had any problems". But are there other reasons?
I mean, you can literally get systems for free (or next to nothing) that are capable of running various modern operating systems, including various versions of Windows, Mac OS and Mac OS X, myriad Linux distributions to your heart's content, BSD distributions, and so on, that would be much more functional and capable, particularly in the context of the internet and associated applications.
So what's the draw? Why keep running on something like a Commodore 64? Even considering legitimate reasons for continuing to use it, I don't see how sticking with something exceedingly obsolete can be functional when viewed alongside semi-modern systems. I understand people collect all manner of antiques for a variety of reasons, including other things that may be nearly impossible to service or repair easily; is the reason for using obsolete computing equipment the same?
Status? Hobby? Entertainment? Eccentricity? Just to "do it"?
And to reiterate, I can understand collecting pristine Commodore 64s or similar in working order, and even making TCP/IP stacks and such work, just for the sake of doing it. But using it as a primary system exclusively? Some people may own and spend a great deal of time on something like, say, a Model T, but they don't use it as their daily driver...
On another note, I do agree that his system being a Commodore 64 will "complicate investigators' efforts"; but to say that it would be difficult to transfer files "without loss" is disingenuous at best. Do they mean "transfer files" to include possibly-deleted files (in which case I agree there may be "loss")? Do they mean contextual loss, because modern applications may or may not be able to open files and represent context-sensitive features like position, text styles, and so on? Or are they talking about "loss" in that they won't be able to run their standard forensic tools that package everything up with a nice little bow? If they're talking about files representing images and text, I don't care what it is: if it's functional and intact, there's no reason for there to be "loss". I don't care if it takes resorting to eBay, digging up old company engineers, or weirdos on web forums...they should be able to recover anything they need to.
I also hear they are having trouble getting information from his IBM typewriter. Apparently he used White Out to clear the data.
//TODO: Insert catchy phrase
Seriously, I have a Commodore 64 sitting right next to me hooked up to a dos box as a hard drive. Data is data. You just need a x1541 cable. There are lots of free software tools to facilitate this, and the d64 and t64 formats are well supported. You can even use audio tapes and a soundcard to transfer files. Once you have the data on the PC, there are multitudes of C64 emulators to run the software directly. I've been doing this since the late '90s. Google is your friend.
Waiting for ad.doubleclick.net...
We must ban all Commodores, to save the children of course. Think of the children!
Quickly becoming a meme:
Only a terrorist wouldn't use Windows.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Because in most forensic investigations, they remove the hard-drive from the PC and then perform the investigation using another operating system guaranteed to not have any nasty surprises built in. They're not going to run the risk that buddy has a small script that deletes his entire hard drive if he doesn't hit ctrl-a-s-d-f-enter within seconds of booting up.
There's likely more to it than that as well, but the point is they generally don't want to use the system they've confiscated...
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
does the story about a girl kept in a dungeon for eight years revolve around the kidnapper's computer. Tor
The article, and most of these comments, are missing the point. The point isn't that you can't get the data off the hard drive - the investigators aren't that stupid - it's that they can't get previoiusly deleted or overwritten files off the hard drive using their standard techniques, because there is no way to image both a drive and the magnetic clues that these folks use.
Of course they'd lose information. Haven't you seen how bad Arial screws up ASCII porn... Uh Nevermind
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Now see? All they had to do was post the question on slashdot as how to connect a C64 to modern machines and they could have had the files off in a jiffy. But NO... they just had to try to figure it out on their own.
Dude, they're in EUROPE. Someone just needs to head for the University, find the demo party, pry Dieter away from his Amiga and be like "oh qiuck, we need the data from these floppies... yes, if you want to make a mod so the data all prints out along a sin-wave line while the SID chip kicks out the collected works of David Hasselhof, that's fine... oh my, you can make the text appear on shiny spheres? So much the better!"
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
You modded this as "Funny", but there are more truths in this text than in any of the other posts. Seriously, any C64 hacker (and there are atleast hundreds of them spread around europe that use the Commodore 64 on a ~daily basis) would know how to transfer all the bits from a C64 floppy to any other format. He would also know what tools this guy used, and how to disassemble them to see how the data is stored (if not common knowledge already). For example, there is the the XzentriX Treffen 2006, http://www.xzentrix.de/ this friday in germany. Just go there, announce a new fast-compo (hack this guys files), and be done with it.
c++;
Well, I can sum up the whole article like this:
:) -- It's easy for technical people to understand the realities and limitations of the technology. It's easy to understand that when you copy the contents of the files from one OS to another the contents do not usually change. But for an average person on the jury, if one computer is old and the other computer is new, and they don't speak the same language, well that means that someone had to translate it, right? And if someone translated it, could they have made a mistake? Of course they could! Of course they DID! Again, the hard evidence - the files, the pictures, the notes, etc.. - do not come under scrutiny. It's the techniques, the procedure, the competence of the investigators that get's questioned, and thanks to our "well educated" and "intelligent" jury, sometimes the guilty go free.
Forensic investigators = not stupid
Article author/editor = selling a story / lack of facts
Court system = flaky justice
Being a computer forensic investigator, what I can tell you is that the problem is not with extracting individual files (being current, deleted, overwritten), or even hashing the contents or drive images themselves. Although this does present a certain technical challenge, this can be overcome. Any forensic investigator will tell you that, what he/she finds during his/hers investigation rarely comes under question or scrutiny. You just can not deny the fact that this "stuff" was found on the suspects media. What almost always comes under scrutiny is the technique used in obtaining the evidence. Where the police do have the tools and techniques that have been court tested for the relatively modern machines and OSes, there is no such tool or a battle tested procedure for capturing and processing data from the Commodore 64. That's what the challenge is all about. It's all about how do you get your evidence, and prevent the defence from shooting it down on a technicality that your approach was not forensically sound, because you have not used the court "approved" forensic tools and techniques. -- a side note: there are no court approved forensic tools, at least not in the USA. There are forensic tools that have gone through court scrutiny and been found to be acceptable, but only in conjunction with a proper forensic sound procedure. The tool is only a tool, like a hammer, it can be used to drive a nail into a wall, or crack someone's skull. Define a proper and sound use