Posted on 08/01/2017 5:17:19 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
Somebody must have thought they were hiding something by smashing those computer hard-drives the FBI recovered from the home of Imran Awan, Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s former information technology (IT) aide.
But odds are excellent they were wrong. Federal law enforcement authorities may have already recovered and read whatever was on those hard drives.
“It depends on what happens, but even if it is hit with a hammer, it probably doesn’t damage the platters that actually hold the data, which remains recoverable,” said Tom Hakim, engineering supervisor for werecoverdata.com, a New York-based lab that specializes in difficult digital retrieval.
“In most cases, it’s very likely” the information on a smashed hard drive can be recovered “in two or three days, maybe a week,” Hakim said.
His lab, which does extensive work for law enforcement and Fortune 500 corporations, has also recovered data from disks that were in fires and that had been submerged in water.
That may be very bad news for Pakistani-born Imran. He and his younger brothers Abid and Jamal, his wife Hina Alvi and his best friend Rao Abbas are criminal suspects in a federal investigation first made public in February into abuse of the congressional IT servers, including the possible transfer of data, emails and files from the offices of dozens of House Democrats.
Imran had worked for Wasserman Schultz — who resigned in July 2016 as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee after its IT system was hacked — since 2005. His relatives and friend had also worked on and off as IT aides, being paid collectively more than $4 million from 2009 to 2016.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
More than one computer is involved too, and I haven't unravelled the various reporting on which agency seized which hardware.
Apparently the hard drives were first discovered by a Marine Corps veteran after he rented a house in Lorton, Va. that belonged to the Awans. Upon moving in, the Marine found a trove of abandoned computer equipment in the garage, much of which had been destroyed, and called the FBI to take a look.
FBI Seized Crushed Hard Drives From Home Of Wasserman-Schultz' IT Aide | Zero Hedge
Well, that changes my thought that no drives were found "smashed" outside of government custody.
Maybe the report I read was just out of confusion, maybe conflating the stashed laptop (taken by Capitol Police) with the busted up hardware found in a home rented out by the Awan's.
Fellow IT staffers TheDCNF interviewed said the Awans were often absent from weekly meetings and email exchanges. One of the fellow staffers said some of the computers the Awans managed were being used to transfer data to an off-site server.Shortly after the criminal probe was revealed in February, Imran abruptly moved out of his longtime home on Hawkshead Drive in Lorton, Va., and listed it for rent on a website that connects landlords with military families.
One of the new tenants — a Marine Corps veteran married to a female Navy Officer — said he found “wireless routers, hard drives that look like they tried to destroy, laptops, [and] a lot of brand new expensive toner.”
The tenants called the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and, not long after, FBI agents arrived together with the Capitol Police to interview them and confiscate the equipment. The Marine spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns for his wife’s naval career, saying she doesn’t want to be associated with a national security incident.
“It was in the garage. They recycled cabinets and lined them along the walls. They left in a huge hurry,” the Marine said. “It looks like government-issued equipment. We turned that stuff over.”
Wasserman Schultz resigned as DNC chief in July 2016 after the committee’s IT system was hacked. She has since refused to fire Imran despite learning that he is a target of a criminal investigation.
The Marine said Imran wanted the hard drives back so desperately that he threatened to sue the renter for stealing them.
“It was unbelievable. I don’t know where they get off thinking they’re going to sue us for items we have no obligation to hold onto,” he said.
Imran came to the house for the items “three to four times,” but the Marine wouldn’t let him enter.
“Their lawyer contacted us today via email and said we owed $350 in late charges and the items he left in the house,” the Marine said.
The Marine heard about the House investigation on the radio, and by that time, he had noticed other bizarre signs of desperation from his landlord.
Source: Daily Caller
I work in healthcare, and this is a topic of discussion for us. We end up contracting to have them run through an industrial shredder, which, like nuking from space, is the only way to be sure!
We also do have a way to securely wipe them, but...it takes a long time and we only use it in very specific cases. For example, if we are selling expensive imaging hardware to another hospital, it can be very complicated because they also purchased the software that runs the scanner, so we can’t just completely wipe the disk, otherwise, they get an expensive piece of equipment that cannot run.
I have heard, though never tried it, that putting it in a microwave oven will destroy the data, though that may be urban legend.
True there... lol Even if the disks just get bent it could be very hard.
“Thoughts on smashed hard-drive viability?”
They don’t work after that. We use an hydraulic press at work. It crunches them good.
Why would they need to recover what’s on the drives? I’m pretty sure Awan copied them for insurance before “destroying” them.
AMEN.. that is the prayer of my
heart right now ... that the
truth will be exposed and “ come
to the light”!!
I could be wrong, but I think this is still true if you have a good degausser. I would think it could really scramble a solid state drive.
But preventative high encryption of all sensitive content into a vault is the best measure. It’s gibberish before it even gets recorded and without the key it could take a decade or more to piece back together.
My understanding of how these devices were discovered makes me believe that's what happened.
On the question of whether the information contained on those drives ever sees the light of day...doubtful.
We will never get the truth. To damaging to the US.
I think in a case like this they might be more interested in just being able to read the registry part of a disk. Accessing the registry might lead them to other sources where the content might be stored.
I said nearly the same thing, but last week. I’ll say it again. It all depends on the condition of the dataplatters inside teh case. If you’ve ever seen the inside of a traditional hard disk drive, it looks like an old school record player, but the records aren’t vinyl, they’re metallic, and they are stacked, and there are multiple arms to read each one. If someone smashed a disk case with a hammer, most of the data could be intact, but a lot of work would have to be done to straighten and and recondition the surfaces and read them, and it would be inevitable that a fraction of the data would be lost, along creases and cracks, at the very least. But heuristics and rebuild the structure of the data placement. It wont necessarily fill in the blanks, but it will allow the allocation tables of the viable areas to be read.
When people have brought their old hard drives to me to be disposed of, I put the claw of the hammer through the drive multiple times.
I like Gibson, I go use their Cookie forensics tool quite often to see what sites are dumping on me...
https://www.grc.com/cookies/forensics.htm?aikmxz0gvj3hc
Because Hillary was going to win. They didn’t have to hide anything.
If it was Comey, the hard drives won't be recoverable!
He might have done a quick smashing when he saw police cars outside.
************
These were left behind in a house he was renting out.. reports are that the drives weren’t smashed but partially disassembled , the cases were pried open, also there were routers and toner carts recovered along with congressional (gov’t tagged) blackberry phones.
Recovered, Redacted, and never Revealed.
I have heard, though never tried it, that putting it in a microwave oven will destroy the data, though that may be urban legend.
********************
The case will protect the platters inside ,, the microwave will however destroy the circuit board components on the outside of the drive. To be sure the platters must be physically destroyed or put through a secure erase procedure. The erase procedure takes a long time as it goes through multiple passes of every sector.
The proper way to dispose of a hard drive is to send it through a metal shredder, leaving pieces 1/4” in size. At that point, it becomes very difficult to recover data.
If using a hammer, you can break the circuit board, and dent the casing, but data recovery houses normally remove the drive platters from the drive, and those are usually left intact, complete with all the data available, when someone just takes a hammer to a hard drive.
However, were a computer professional to do this, he would have known to first disassemble the drive and smash the individual platters. Depending on the drive, it might have glass, ceramic, or metal platters. The important thing is to physically destroy those platters. Once that happens, the data is not recoverable.
Mark
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