[118400] in Cypherpunks
IP: Military unveils new high-tech crime-fighting lab
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Sun Sep 26 18:20:52 1999
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Date: Sun, 26 Sep 1999 13:51:29 -0400
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From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
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Date: 24 Sep 99 18:36:57 EDT
From: ROBERT HARPER <robert-harper@usa.net>
To: Ignition Point <ignition-point@precision-d.com>
Subject: IP: Military unveils new high-tech crime-fighting lab
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http://www.foxnews.com/js_index.sml?content=3D/news/wires2/0924/n_ap_0924=
_274.sml
Military unveils new high-tech crime-fighting lab
5.50 p.m. ET (2155 GMT) September 24, 1999
By Ted Bridis, Associated Press [Photo]
Associated Press
LINTHICUM, Md. (AP) - The Defense David Ferguson,
Department showed off its latest director of the
arsenal of high-tech crime-fighting Department of Defense
tools Friday, a $15 million Computer Forensics
computer lab where it can trace Laboratory, poses at
hackers across the Internet, the new facility in
unscramble hidden files and rebuild Linthicum, Md.,
smashed floppy disks that were cut Friday, Sept. 24,
in pieces. 1999. The lab
provides digital
Investigators will use the new evidence processing
Defense Computer Forensics Lab, for Department of
located in a nondescript brick Defense
building south of Baltimore, to counterintelligence,
unravel electronic evidence in criminal, and fraud
cases of espionage, murder and investigations. (AP
other crimes involving America's Photo/John Gillis)
military.
Using powerful computers and special software, these 80
digital detectives can trace a hacker across the Internet to
his keyboard, recover files thought to be safely deleted and
quickly search tens of thousands of documents for an
important phrase.
Cyberspace is "a new kind of wild, lawless sort of
frontier,'' said Christopher Mellon, a deputy assistant
Defense secretary. "We have important national interests,
and we have to be able to function.''
Organizers envision sharing equipment and secret techniques
they develop to help FBI, state and local authorities
prosecute criminals who use computers, such as drug-dealers
who track profits and customers with accounting software.
The FBI even established its own minilab upstairs in the
building, though most of its digital forensics work will
continue to be performed in downtown Washington at its
headquarters.
"Virtually every white-collar crime case today brings at
least one computer, if not a whole network of computers,''
FBI Assistant Director Donald Kerr said. "We need people who
are well prepared.''
David Ferguson, the lab's director, showed how experts can
use these high-tech tools to enhance garbled audio
recordings - even digitally mute one voice in a conversation
to listen to another - and recover computer files from disks
and tapes even if they had been deleted.
The lab can dissect virtually any type of computer, from
handheld devices to Apple computers to those using Windows
or even specialized software. It's developing a way to
analyze all machines using a powerful assembly of computers
working together, called a "Beowulf cluster,'' technology
also used by NASA and some Energy Department researchers.
One lab worker, David Lang, demonstrated how investigators
can reassemble and read from a computer's floppy disk that a
criminal trying to hide evidence might cut into pieces and
crumple.
The procedure, developed a decade ago but still being
perfected, takes "a day if you're lucky, to a month if it's
something you haven't encountered before,'' Lang said. "It's
basically just a jigsaw puzzle to be put back together.''
Ferguson expects to handle about 400 cases each year from
all the military branches, mostly crimes where a computer
might have played part in espionage, deaths or sexual
assaults. About 10 percent of cases involve tracing hackers
snooping through military computers.
The new program also trains investigators, who will be
assigned full time to military posts and bases worldwide.
Typical classes are three weeks of about a dozen students
learning about espionage, hackers, networks and special
computer hardware.
"What we intend to handle here is the big and large,''
Ferguson said, citing examples where huge amounts of data
need to be analyzed or where a particularly savvy criminal
scrambled his digital records and won't give up his
password.
Although Ferguson and others declined to discuss specific
cases already under way, they described as rare those
involving encrypted files.
The White House agreed last week to allow sale of the most
powerful data-scrambling technology with virtually no
restrictions, although military and law enforcement
officials have long warned that criminals and terrorists
might also use the technology.
Ferguson said he was confident that techniques to break
those messages will be adequate once Congress approves a
proposal by the Clinton administration to give the FBI $80
million over four years for the technology.
Defense Department officials also acknowledged that the
lab's proximity to the nearby National Security Agency, the
government's premier code-breaking organization, was a
primary factor in deciding its location.
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Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
