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New US Computer Forensic Institute
Quincy writes "The DHS and Secret Service are setting up a new computer forensic institute in Alabama. Set to open in mid-2008, the new National Computer Forensic Institute will be able to train over 900 law enforcement officers per year. 'It will initially be staffed by 18 Secret Service agents and will feature classrooms, a forensic laboratory, an evidence vault, and server rooms. Courses will be offered in the investigation of electronic crimes, network intrusion investigation, and computer forensics... [T]he Secret Service says that it will help to bring judges and prosecutors up to speed as well.'" Maybe over time we'll see fewer botches of justice like those in the news recently.
Do you HAVE to be a law officer, or can anyone sign up?
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Queue the banjo music.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Figuring out what happened in a computer system months after the fact is not easy. Most programmers have more than enough trouble figuring out what exactly happened in their own programs thirty seconds ago.
Still -- not to say it's a bad idea. You have to start somewhere...
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
FTFS: " Set to open in mid-2008, the new National Computer Forensic Institute will be able to train over 900 law enforcement officers per year. 'It will initially be staffed by 18 Secret Service agents and will feature classrooms, a forensic laboratory, an evidence vault, and server rooms. "
Holy fsck! A full year from now? In a year computers will have changed enough to cause this to falter badly from the start! It will take only one worm of the right design, one change to hard drive technology, one of any number of things to change the virtual face of computer forensics. That change could happen next week. This taking over a year to put in production doesn't sound even close to flexible enough to accomplish the stated goals!
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Police investigators need much more than the theory, they need indepth coverage of the practices. Prosecutors and judges need more of the theory, the pros and cons, etc. A prosecutor doesn't need to know how to hunt down a trojan horse, but should be able to look at a police report and for the most part completely grok the methods the police used as a knowledgeable reader. Same with the judge.
The Secret Service says that it will help to bring judges and prosecutors up to speed as well.'"
What about defense attorneys?
Microsoft must be the biggest supporter of computer forensic investigators.
Even since DOS 1.0, Microsoft operating systems never really erase a file. Now, they use cache, temp files, and the recycling bin to make lots of copies too. And that's only on the unerased portion of the hard drive. Chances are there are more copies on the erased data sectors.
Most users who really want to erase a file from the file system have to erase about two or three copies (if they know where the copies are). Wiping a file only zaps the original, not the copies.
Those investigators have it too easy.
My wiping program is made by Craftsman Tools (claw or ball-peen configuration)
Am I the only one here who got a laugh out of this?
Redneck #1: (pokes computer with a stick) "dang, can't say ah evah seen one of dem der thangs b'for"
Reneck #2: (spits out chewing tobacco) "Well, ah dunno wut dat der thang is, but I rekon we oughta be shootin' it bout now"
Redneck #1: (opens beer from 6-pack holster on belt) "hmm, watchu say we take dis inta town here, and seeif summun'll know what it is?"
Reneck #2: "boy.. are you kiddin? We's the smart ones in dis heah town! I'm tellin ya'll that dis is from space. Dat's waht dis is! A space ve-hic-al"
I am open source, and Linux baby!
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
But will this computers have the ubiquitous CSI "Picture Enhance" feature?