[44607] in Hotline Meeting
Re: Case 118520: Break in
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mike Whitson)
Fri Aug 21 15:09:19 1998
To: hotline@MIT.EDU
Cc: ETRIAS@MIT.EDU, ops@MIT.EDU
From: Mike Whitson <mwhitson@MIT.EDU>
Date: 21 Aug 1998 15:09:15 -0400
In-Reply-To: hotline@MIT.EDU's message of Fri, 21 Aug 1998 15:02:24 EDT
hotline@MIT.EDU writes:
> We have an IBM AIX machine that was broken into last night.
> Everything in a users directory was erased (about 65megs). Is there
> any way of recovering it? The last backup was a few months ago, so
> that a lot of work was lost. Is it possible to recover any of the
> files from the hard disk? Who else could give me some advise?
> --- Entry: Friday, Aug 21, 1998 3:02 PM -- larugsi ---
> --- Sent E-Mail (Entire Log) To: ETRIAS@MIT.EDU; Cc: ops
> Have forwarded to ops to see if they have any other added
> ideas or thoughts, but from this stand point, recovery looks
> grim.
Basically, Lou's right. Ops can only help if the files were stored in
AFS (which we back up). We can't do anything about data loss on
machines we don't maintain.
Now, there do exist companies which can attempt data recovery through
a number of extreme measures, for fairly exorbitant prices. There's a
chance one of these could help, if the work is important enough to
merit the price. Unfortunately, I don't have any more information on
such companies than the fact that they exist.
This is a case where an ounce of prevention (in the form of regular
backups and taking the time to secure computers) is worth many pounds
of cure. I wish I had better news to give you.
Mike Whitson
MIT/IS Athena Server Operations
