computer hacking fornsic investigator

feline78

has anyone done the ec council's chfi?
or has anyone gone thro the books? what sort of job opportunities does one get when they complete the above. the brief course description is really interesting....

xevious

I recall a lecture at an old company where the presenters said they have machines that can take hardrive platters and recover a substantial amount of data no matter how you attempt to erase it, even with a large magnet. I don't know how truthful this is, but all I remember was something about how data is written on the platter and it's never in a perfect linear-circle, so it writes like an 'S' around the disc. Unless you follow that same 'S' pattern and fill it with zeros (highly unlikely), there will always be info that can be retrieved. No one really raised any questions, so using a sledge-hammer was not asked.

Then I fell asleep and woke up with a soar neck... forensics just wasn't for me. This was 5 years ago.

I agree, The CHFI cert looks quite interesting...

-Xevious

JDMurray

I used to remove the hard disk plattens and scorch them in a coffee can with a little gasoline. Heat destroys magnatism, so I thought this was good enough.

One day I was pondering that although there may be no technology today that could recover any data from these burnt plattens, at some point in the future such technology may exist. I certianly wouldn't want some of my plattens to be excavated from a landfill decades in the future and have their contents "rediscovered."

I now completely destroy all plattens using a bench grinder to physically remove all of the surface layers of metal that contain the magnetic encoding. I figure no technology--present or future--is going to recover data from floor sweepings.

RAM, however, I still burn and crush. I'm not waiting for someone to invent a way to scan old RAM chips at the quantum level and recover any traces of data (Intel and HP can probably already do this).

Fu Loser

Use an external hard drive and just get a powerfull magnet and put it on top of it. Destroys the entire disc. You may ahve seen that in some movies.

JDMurray

That's not 100% destructive. I've got some forensic recovery tools that'll still pull data off a hard drive that's been subjected to a strong electromagnetic fields.

viper75

jdmurray wrote:

I certianly wouldn't want some of my plattens to be excavated from a landfill decades in the future and have their contents "rediscovered."

I now completely destroy all plattens using a bench grinder to physically remove all of the surface layers of metal that contain the magnetic encoding. I figure no technology--present or future--is going to recover data from floor sweepings.

RAM, however, I still burn and crush. I'm not waiting for someone to invent a way to scan old RAM chips at the quantum level and recover any traces of data (Intel and HP can probably already do this).

You're making me nervous!!!

bluemason

I went to check out the website, looks good and you don't have to attend their classes but instead can download their course... albeit it is not cheap (about $264 USD)...

Just remember that having a Certificate can never put you at a disadvantage

/usr

I now completely destroy all plattens using a bench grinder to physically remove all of the surface layers of metal that contain the magnetic encoding.

What are you so afraid of?

JDMurray

/usr wrote:

I now completely destroy all plattens using a bench grinder to physically remove all of the surface layers of metal that contain the magnetic encoding.

What are you so afraid of?

It's not a matter of being afraid; it's a point of doing a job the effectiveness of which can't be refuted.

Any media capable of temporarily, persistently, or permanently storing data should be physically destroyed to the point where it can't possibly be usefully reconstructed. This includes static and dynamic solid state memory. Just because information can't be recovered from something today doesn't mean the technology to recover it won't exist in the future.

Besides, I like breaking things.