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Post-Suicide Account Cracking?
An anonymous reader writes "A good friend of mine had her younger brother apparently commit suicide last week. He was a young, promising CS major who was close to being accepted into a very prestigious school. He was very into Linux as well as PHP/MySQL coding. He left absolutely nothing behind for the family as far as a death note or explanation, and there is some possibility that this was all somehow a tragic accident. The family is in a situation where proof of accidental death would change how this was viewed in terms of paying for parts of the funeral. More importantly, some members of the family are hoping to find something, anything, that might explain why this all went down. Since I'm the most computer-skilled person the family knows, they have asked me if I could help them try to find some information. My possible approaches are: his Linux laptop, his university, Gmail And Hotmail email accounts, and a second MySpace profile that apparently has been tagged as private. How ethical would it be to, say, try to crack his root password in a situation like this? I wouldn't attempt to crack a man's account for his wife because she thinks he is cheating on her, as his life is his own business. In death, would you have the same respect for a person's private thoughts? Secondly, If I contacted places like Google, MSN, the university, and MySpace, what are the odds that they would give me access to any of his accounts? I have links to obituaries and such to prove that he is indeed gone. Would it be a matter of not giving it to me (maybe only to the family), or is this something that they would not do at all? Any opinions on if I should do this and if so, how I should go about it?"
dead people don't really care, one way or another.
a court order will streamline all this for you
Your friend is gone; he no longer owns anything. His worldly possessions, including his accounts and passwords, belong to those he left behind. They have asked you to open the locked box, open it.
There is no ethical delimma. You are being asked to open something by that something's owner. NOT cracking passwords would be wrong.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
If you have physical access to his laptop, you can just boot with any linux live cd and mount the partitions without any access control. This will not work if he is using encryption, but unfortunately, few people do.
c++;
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
How ethical would it be to, say, try to crack his root password in a situation like this?
Take 5 seconds to boot into single-user mode, or mount the disk elsewhere sans password.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
If you saw your friend again, would you be able to explain why you did it? Would he agree with your reasoning or would he feel you had violated his sovereignty? You can still respect him in death, what would he say?
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
Well, if it was suicide, and there was anything he didn't want people seeing, then he had his chance to delete it. If it was not suicide then I think you have to tread more carefully, but in the end the dead have no right to privacy (or reason to care).
For FSM's sake, though, take a moment to "accidentally" delete his porn and such while you are going about this. That's just basic courtesy.
...but...
The belongings of the deceased become part of the estate. The estate, with a lack of a will, can go either to the 'state' or to the next of kin (depending where you live). The 'state' usually takes its taxes and give the rest to the next of kin. This means that the laptop and accounts now belong to the family (barring the EULA on myspace and google which, correct me if I'm wrong, state that the ownership resides with them). This means that you are cracking a laptop for an OWNER that no longer has a password (forgotten it, so to speak). There is no ethical issue here.
Gregor
You beat me to the punch. Having worked in the financial sector for a time, a death certificate should do the trick.
The catch will be is if the person signed up for accounts but didn't use his real name, address, etc. Then you may have a problem. Otherwise, submitting the certificate (more than likely official copies) should suffice to prove to the various places that the person is truly dead and you are doing a port mortem of his accounts.
The family should be the ones contacting these places as they are next of kin.
I know it's asking for trouble, but this is why all your accounts including username and password should be written down and stored in a separate location. Regardless if it's suicide or getting run over by a wildebeast, someone, somewhere, will need to be able to get into your accounts to clear things up.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Boot Linux with init=/bin/sh, remount the root partition to readwrite, edit /etc/shadow to change the root password to be blank, remount / to readonly, reboot.
If you login as him (similar method to blank his password), you might find that firefox (or konqueror if he used that) is remembering his passwords and logins.
This reads as if it were an attempt by a person working a maters's thesis to determine if a pro-linux, pro-privacy crowd would stick with their principles or instead defer to the humanity of helping a family get over a tagedy. Facinating...
Cogito Ergo Sum
I don't have a good answer to your dilemma. However, it made me think. What is the best way to implement a Dead Man's Switch on personal data (laptop, online accounts etc). I for sure have some stuff that I wouldn't want anyone to see - even if I was dead (I was young and needed the money).
BTW - Am I the only one having problems with the new Reply box? The nifty ajax based "preview post" always hangs and I'm forced to use the old one.
If this guy was any kind of good person at all, I'm sure he would have wanted to share his porn collection with the world after he was gone. Sure, maybe you shouldn't tell anyone where it came from if it's got porn featuring midgets, grannies, horses, or especially all three at once, but you should still post it on Slashdot^W^W^W^Wgive it to his close friends.
If you do contact Google, MSN, etc., don't do it through electronic means. Don't even do it over the phone. Do it in writing. Yes, actual letters on paper sent via (registered) snail mail. Include copies of the death certificate, obituaries, etc. Don't use your name and address - you are nobody as far as legal standing is concerned. Channel all the communications through one of the parents - have them sign the letters, use their name and address.
Google is your friend! Here are some links to the story:
Slashdot
Another Slashdot.
The Conclusion to the story.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
A good friend of mine had her younger brother apparently commit suicide last week.
... but that sounds like a lot of words to describe a hit job. The political correctness is awesome though!
I disagree... A simple court order would open up any account they want. Why people go to these companies and ask "permission" is beyond me... That is why our legal system is there, and it is quite good at getting what it wants...
In the military, there's the tradition of cleaning up a dead guy's locker before sending it home to his next of kin. Remove all skin mags, letters from local girlfriends if he has a wife back home, that sort of thing. Get rid of anything that might make them think less of the dead, they're already broken up about it as is. I'm sure the last thing this kid's family would want to find out about is his furry porn collection.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
There is no evidence yet that the person didn't desire to make some things private and their wish should be respected even after death.
You are making a mistake that because someone is dead (and hence obviously can't care) implies that they didn't care when they were alive.
In absence of legal will it is hard to tell what the desire of the person was, but if someone wrote in their will that they want for example their laptop destroyed after their death, it would obviously make it un-ethical to ignore that wish and poke through their laptop.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Its not legal to meddle with evidence.
My condolences to the family.
I would say that a death certificate is a necessary, but by no means sufficient, piece of evidence.
There was recently a death in my extended family. I have seen how, even with a death certificate and all official documents (police reports, etc.), it still took literally years to finalize routine things (closing accounts, transferring assets, dealing with insurance, etc.). So it turns out its quite long and complicated to even just do the "normal" things (that must be done when any person dies, and for which no one was really contesting anything... just following the protocol). So I can only imagine how difficult it will be in situations where things are unclear.
For instance, if you show a death certificate to an email provider, what does that prove? It shows that someone died, but doesn't actually prove that it was the owner of the account that died. (Did he sign up with his real name, or fake details?) I can imagine an email provider requesting certain conditions (like waiting a year to make sure there is no activity on the account, and requiring some proof of connection between the person and the account).
All this to say: prepare for a long and drawn-out ordeal. Finalizing a person's affairs is not a quick matter. (On the other hand, you might end up being lucky, and finding a "passwords.txt" file on his computer somewhere.)
A "simple" court order => Not free
--Sam
Would snooping around on your laptop or rifling through your e-mail accounts allow someone to "understand" you? Are you confident that it would portray the facet of your personality that you wanted others to see?
Obviously, this is a sad situation. I lost a sibling to suicide and the bottom line is that I don't think that any satisfactory answers can be had in a situation like this.
Whether or not the privacy of the deceased should be respected might be an ethical dilemma. But I think that if we are realistic about our own selves and what we choose to share with friends, family or no-one at all, we have to admit that breaking into this mans files would almost certainly be a violation of his wishes, and likely raise more questions than it answers.
Absent some purely administrative function like settling his accounts, I would not go this route.
Simply image the disk, and toy around with the copy. If you fail, make a new copy. That's how you learn data recovery.
The primary example here is credit card debt. The debt may reach the estate, but not the beneficiaries. I.E. I die with $10k in assets and $20k in debt. I leave a will saying everything goes to my son Jimmy. Jimmy will get nothing as the estate is consumed by the debt. But the $10k in remaining unsatisfied debt is not passed on, it is written down as a loss by the credit card company.
Every provider is going to be different depending on use policies, jurisdiction, and security certifications desired by the party, however ultimately you can compell compliance through the method above. It doesn't hurt to ask, but expect to be turned down unless you have a death cirtificate and proof you are a parent (it seems from the article this was either a minor / major with no issue (wife/kids/etc).Gmail has a process for this, as do all other freemail services. Gmail's is Here Googling for the others policies will yield results for the others as well.
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
Like he has been sleeping with your girlfriend in the past?
1. Your full name and contact information, including a verifiable email address.
2. The Gmail address of the individual who passed away.
3a. The full header from an email message that you have received at your verifiable email address, from the Gmail account in question. (To obtain the header from a message in Gmail, open the message, click 'More options,' then click 'Show original.' Copy everything from 'Delivered- To:' through the 'References:' line. To obtain headers from other webmail or email providers, please refer to http://www.spamcop.com/help_with_headers/)
3b. The entire contents of the message.
4. A copy of the death certificate of the deceased.
5. A copy of the document that gives you Power of Attorney over the Gmail account.
6. If you are the parent of the individual, please send us a copy of the Birth Certificate if the Gmail account owner was under the age of 18. In this case, Power of Attorney is not required.
There were a few previous ask slashdots on this:
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/10/0014220
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/23/2334218
If I recall the consensus was that anything you can hack together in software has a good chance of failing. Plus, honestly, do you really want to have tons of personal information waiting to go out any day that you forget to push the 'I'm not dead' button before you fall asleep?
Go get a safe deposit box, fill it with stuff, and leave the key with a lawyer.
You are awash in a sea of fiercely stated opinions. Obvious exits are: 'File->Quit', 'Reply', and 'Page Down'.
A friend of mine died last year and, as long as you can provide the proper paperwork, his family got access to his hotmail account. i guess as long as they can tie the death certificate to the person in the e-mails then its not a problem.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
Seriously. Speak to a lawyer, and then recommend a professional data recovery company to the family. You do not want to get involved with this. Best case, it turns out there's proof it was accidental. I'm not sure how that could be proved, but let's assume it was.
Worst case, you find evidence of... something. Drug use, criminal activity, involvement with a cult, something like that. Whatever it was, it drove him to suicide. Now you're in the position of telling the family that their son/brother was doing something they wouldn't have approved of. Yes, they may be glad to know what really happened, but you'd better believe that things are going to be awkward with the family from now on.
Or, possibly even worse than that... what if it turns out it was something the family did? Even if it wasn't anything illegal or even dishonest... do you want to be in the position of telling the parents that something they did caused their son to kill himself? I wouldn't. I wouldn't want to do that to my worst enemy, let alone people I liked.
Speak to a lawyer to find out the legal issues and what is needed to get information from various hosting services, then suggest that the family contact a good data recovery firm. Have them hire a lawyer to get the data from the hosting services. No matter how much you want to help, restrict it to helping them find professionals to get the data, don't try to do it yourself.
Dear anonymous reader,
Your "good" friend may have murdered her brother as well. From what you say, a suicide is unlikely without some strong reason and without death note. If some information related to such crime is to be found on his account, not only you could be involved in murder case, but you may be in life danger yourself knowing some key information about it, just in case your "good" friend wants to clean up all traces.
There you are, staring at me again.
You'll just invite delay and trouble by contacting service providers. Instead, change his laptop's root password (it's easy: at grub edit the default stanza and set init=/bin/bash and then boot; once in, use "passwd" to change the root passwd; next use "passwd username" to change his user's password; using the rescue environment is slightly more complicated). This assumes he is not using an encrypted FS, which is likely.
Once you can boot into his user account, run the mail client(s) he has setup. They likely have the passwords stored. Voila, no need to contact the service providers.
Ethical? Well, you'll want to check with his heirs, first, but assuming there is no resistance on that front, go for it. It's called archeology when we do it to the Pharaohs.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
A death certificate from the next of kin opens many doors.
Correct answer. ISPs will serve up almost anything when presented with correct, verifiable death certificate and a letter from the correct, verifiable next of kin stating that person X is authorised to take over the deceased's logins.
It is, sadly, a very slow process.
I was in the unfortunate situation of having to re-establish control over a number of friends and family's domains when their registrant, a friend of mine from uni, died quite expectedly (had a massive birth defect, estimated TTL 2 years, actual TTL 35 years).
The sad thing is that I am still very annoyed with my dead friend for not making better arrangements, given his condition. Which is definitely not how I want to remember him.
My own will now gives instructions on how to recover my domain registry username/password.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Your ethics in this case extend to the living, not the dead. "First, do no harm..." might be a good motto here. You are going to be mucking about in some content that might not be what anyone is expecting, but there is a story there and the living want it told-- at least to them.
So long as you are discreet and have the consent of the family, do what you need to do to bring them closure.
I've lost a child. I can assure you that it is important to the family that the tragedy not be a pointless one. A tragedy happened, and at the very least they want to know that they handled it well, that perhaps they are wiser for it, SOMETHING. It's called closure, and it doesn't ease the loss but it does help with the frustration.
It's actually a bit gray. If the deceased were not so then you would be entirely correct, as this would be unsolicited system intrusion. However, upon his death his possessions, including his various passwords and access to his accounts, became the responsibility of the executor (one would assume that either the mother or father took on this role, as it would be an exceptionally odd thing for a 21 year old to actually write up a will stating otherwise), who has since requested that the intrusion be done on what is, essentially, their property.
What shocks me is that this was ruled a suicide without an inquest going through all of this already. That is a very radical conclusion to come to, and one with (as stated in the story) some pretty serious legal and financial ramifications; happy successful people don't just off themselves for no reason and without any sort of note or indication that things were not going quite so peachy as believed i am surprised that no investigation has been done if only to rule the possibility that it's an accident.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
My old college roommate also committed suicide last year, and I found myself in a similar situation, as the most computer-literate of his friends and family. I didn't think twice about helping his wife and family get into his accounts, his private server, and his email. There was a lot of stuff in there, such as work for his consulting clients, family photos, etc that were important for them to have, and it was good for everyone.
Yes, getting a court order, death certificate, etc can help - but as far as getting into a computer that you've been given by the family (or a privately hosted machine), you should go ahead so long as you have the family's blessing.
his wife and family asked me to get into his Yahoo account and ICQ account. There was a secret answer that either resets the password or reveals the password. This was in 1999 so maybe security has changed. The user sets the secret answer. His was the original middle name of his mother. His family gave me a copy of his birth certificate and I got the answer off of it and got into his account on Yahoo and gave the password to his wife and reset his ICQ password and gave it to his wife as well. We couldn't find anything that triggered the suicide. But on his computer the police found in his web cache that he visited web sites about suicide and got an idea from one of them to use a shotgun on himself. He bought the shotgun, and left a credit card receipt in the box, according to his wife who told me what the police found.
He was a brilliant C++ programmer and I had forwarded emails to him about jobs, and found that a year's worth of job possibilities and recruiter email hadn't been opened up and looked at by him. He just moved it to a different folder. Had he responded to any of them, his chances of finding another job would have been better.
I'd explain more but it is too painful to talk about. There were alcohol and drug related abuses as well in his life. He drank a whole bottle of vodka before killing himself. He ignored phone calls and emails for months, and I couldn't contact him.
Oh yeah if he uses Firefox, there is a reveal passwords option in the tools/options/security/show passwords box. You might be able to see what passwords he used, unless he wiped them out and also cleared his password history.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I doubt that gmail/hotmail/myspace etc will give you anything, tho if the death is suspicious the police could contact them.
You wouldn't need to crack his root pass, you could just mount his drive in another machine and read his data from it, or change the password, assuming he hasn't encrypted the drive.
You might be able to get into some of his accounts using information pulled from his laptop, and once you have one of his email accounts you might be able to get into other things using reset password links etc..
Also, since you're working for his family, if he's used typically lame "security questions" like mothers maiden name and first pet etc, you should be able to get that information trivially.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Last year, one of my roomates died of an accidental medical overdose and since I didnt know any of her distant family I had to go thru the process of getting information from other sources. I had to get this in order to work with the Funeral costs and details. I needed to get access to her contacts and Emails from HOTMAIL and had no clue to her password. I contacted the Hotmail support and explained my situation. They asked me to provide a copy of her death ceritficate (as I was the one that handled the police / hospital / coroner aspect) I was deemed her legal representation. After supplying the document and proof of identication for myself, I was given a copy of her information and emails. It's not as complicated as it sounds, but whoever will ask a provider for the information also needs to be the person on the legal documentation otherwise the provider (most probably) refuse to supply the information. Hope this helps, Doug!
As the parent said, booting the system from a live CD will let you in. If this person used Firefox's password manager (and assuming he didn't set a master password), you can reset his account's password from the live CD, then log into the laptop as him, and use Firefox to connect to hotmail, gmail, etc... You could even use Firefox's "Show Passwords" to recover the passwords, if needed.
I'd suggest something similar. Ask the probate judge to release the computers to a designated consultant, maybe a family friend, who has the technical chops to bypass the passwords (which, as others mention here, is not that big a job) and whose judgment they trust to preserve the decedent's privacy while he digs out anything that might help them.
rj
My daughter was murdered by her ex-boyfriend two years ago. I had recently given her a laptop in preparation for college and after the police were finished inspecting it for clues it was returned to me.
Fortunately she had stayed logged in to her myspace account and I was able to use the "reveal asterisks" hack to reveal her password. That password led to other accounts & email accounts which then led to more passwords.
Eventually I could access everything - to include the killer's accounts. It was very helpful for me to be able to know that my daughter was exactly who I thought she was and at the same time gain insight into the punk that murdered her.
If there is the opportunity to give your friend some closure then I don't feel that a moral dilemma exists. The dead are just that... dead. The ones that are grieving and in pain are the living. If you can do something that may assuage their grief I feel you should.
Just be aware that what might be revealed has the potential to cause more pain - but that's really your friend's decision.
Good luck, and my condolences to your friend.
JAGga.me ----> Producing video games addressing emotional health and wellness issues affecting teens.
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=14300
Lots of options here.
first try to crack the passwords on his machine. If you can get any passwords in plain text write them down. He may have reused them. If you can get into his profile, its possible he set his cookies to auto login to his websites.
Next try to get into his email. Call the provider and ask about your situation and find out what the rules are with out ever telling the operator your name or the account name. If the info they give you will not help you, hang up and call back pretending to be the deceased. They dont know he is dead yet.
Get the birth cert, social security number, phone numbers and addresses (current and past), birthdate, drivers lic, mothers maiden name. Try calling from his home phone, or be near that phone when you make your call. Just pretend to be an average user that cant get into your email. Reset the password.
Once you have the email account under your control you can just request a password reset from most of the other services.
Basicly steal his identity, if they cant prove you are not him its hard for them to not let you in. Just play dumb. Dont say you forgot your password, tell them that your email is broken because your account won't work.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
I've heard of such arrangements, but they didn't involve burying it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
After reading the post and some of the replies I wanted to try and provide some insight on a few things. First of all I should mention that I'm a coroner in British Columbia, Canada, so not everything that applies here will apply in other jurisdictions. However I hope I can still be of some help. In regard to suicide vs. accident, there is typically a presumption against suicide and the coroner or medical examiner should have some substantial evidence if they are going to rule the death a suicide. Having said that, suicide is a lot more common than most people believe. For example, British Columbia has a population of a little over 4 million and we see approximately 500 suicides per year. Contrary to what some people are suggesting there is usualy no suicide note. Also, the person is not always known to be suicidal or even depressed. Sometimes a suicide comes as a complete surprise to family and friends. I would not say that this is the norm but it definitely happens. Evidence of a suicide can take several forms. Ideally there should be a history of some kind to support that the death was a suicide but I have had cases in which the circumstances of the death were such that it was unreasonable to conclude that the death was anything other than a suicide, even though the person had no history of depression, suicidal ideation or behaviour that suggested they might harm themselves. As far as the information on the computer, I have taken information from people's computers and in one case seized a computer to get further info from it. I do not see an ethical issue with this if it will help to determine the manner of death. My only suggestion is that the coroner or medical examiner should perhaps be contacted to see if they are willing to do this. They may not be willing to get involved if they feel that they already have sufficient evidence to classify the death. Also, I do not know if the coroner/ME in your area has the legal authority to do this. Still, if the family strongly believes that the death is an accident and not a suicide they should talk to the coroner/ME about their concerns. When family members have raised such concerns with me I have found that sometimes they have very useful information or insight that can have a significant impact on my investigation. Other times it is clear that they are just not willing or able to accept the truth. As far as legalities, I can tell you that here in BC (and I suspect in most cases) it is the same as most people have stated - the things that belonged to the decedent now belong to the estate. The executor or legal next of kin will likely have the legal authority to give you permission to do what you are talking about. Having said that, I will give the standard IANAL disclaimer along with a reminder that laws can of course vary from one jurisdiction to another. NOTE: sorry about the wall of text. This is my first Slashdot post and I haven't yet figured out how to make it appear in paragraphs the way I wrote it.