Responsible disclosure only!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/21/microsoft_oks_online_flaw_finding/

Hi All,

Doues anyone know of a supplier (Ideally in the UK) that would supply a hardware random number generator. Some kind of approval would be useful, CAPS ideally. A high throughput would be a huge plus, too.

I guess this is quite a long shot - anyone?

TIA!

I guess Mr Roboto didn't make it clear.
I assume the document was password protected from modification but not from opening. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Alternative methods could be:
1. Use OpenOffice Writer.
2. Save as a different format. I would use RTF as the HTML produced by MS Word is crap not very good. IIRC, saved as RTF, you will still need to remove the protection but there is no password to enter. I think that's how it works but I don't have MS Office with me to play with!

In that case, can you not ask your administrator for the encryption key?

Now THAT'S funny.

http://www.research.att.com/~bs/bs_faq.html#IEEE (It's a hoax)

That said, I HATE C++, it *IS* a God-awful language. At least with C you could remember the entire command set with ease, no need for a reference tome under your left hand.
I'm glad that all the programming I ever have to do is small snippets of C code and the occasional bit of assembler. I have been approached to do some programming in C++, with a pretty good salary - I ran, screaming.
Seriously, I'd rather write in machine code - raw hex - than C++ I hate it that much.
</opinion rant>

Would I be right in saying you do not have access to the server AND the client?

If you are managing an ISP, you should inform your management that you have security issues and suggest they employ a security professional to secure the network. This is the first time I have heard of ANY ISP that does not have a dedicated security team although I have not dealt with small ISPs.
Are you sure you work for the ISP and you're not just trying to break in to their network?

I am not a lawyer.

If there are no passwords on the systems, I seriously doubt you have any chance of proving who was responsible. There is a world of difference between suspecting and proving in a court of law.

If the material was of an illegal nature you should call in the police. Failure to do so makes you and your company complicit. The more the information is examined, the more the evidence is corrupted. If the material is illegal, call the police immediately. I'm sure if your perpetrator is still working at the company, having the police take a computer away for forensic examnination will, at least, stop them from viewing such material.

This would also be an ideal opportunity to suggest to your company that they need to take the security of their systems seriously. I'm sure they have customer data on these computers and I doubt they would continue to be happy customers if they were aware of how their information was being handled.

I do not know which country you are from and the laws concerning indecent material vary from county to country as do the laws concerning computer misuse and investigation.

I am not a lawyer but if you are in England or Wales, I can provide you with the advice you need from a legal perspective. If not, consult a lawyer and probably even if you are in England or Wales!

Did I mention I am not a lawyer?

Hi Rance,

What's the availability of pentest/ VA tools under OSX like?

Like I said, post the algorithm.

Since you have already overwritten the FAT (or equivalent) this will not be an easy recover. There will be very few tools that will help you here - if any.

It will almost certainly require you to manually recover files from blocks. If your drive was heavily fragmented this will be incredibly time-consuming and very, very difficult.

I would create an image of the laptop HDD on the USB HDD and work with that to avoid any further corruption. Once you've done that, you will need to grep for known file headers or content and hope that the files are held in contiguous blocks. You can then manually snip the files out and re-create them.

Was anything really that important?

Like iSmith said. BACKUPS!

Aahh - serial troffer! At least it would all be re-downloadable.

48gig would be about a dozen DVDs, half that if you use Dual Layer. Or one small portion of a new HDD.

My CRITICAL data totals less than 10 gig. Customer info, reports, etc. Everything else is re-downloadable. The critical data is copied to three network locations and is backed up onto tapes. One is in my fire safe, one is in the fire safe off-site.
My MP3s are /not/ critical data!

Oh dear.
A few questions. How much of an installation did you do? How much data do you have that is not recoverable from other sources, eg via installation, download etc.?
How big is the HDD fitted? Did you install over an existing partition? Have you got a larger HDD you can image your corrupted HDD to? How much time have you got? No backups?

Oops! Misread the last few words.

Happier to laugh at you knowing no data was lost.

Will you be making backups?

48gig of data? You're a busy soul!

You /did/ have backups, didn't you?

Can I point at your .sig and laugh?