How did the DEA read my E-mail?

[blackhat]

Let me make this clearer. NOTHING will keep the technicians at IBM Labs from removing your disk in a clean room from the drive, removing the layers one at a time, and retreiving any information that was ever put on the drive. NOTHING.
The last time I talked to them it was approx $10,000 an hour with a two hour minimum. But that was two years ago so the price may have changed.
Your local prosecutor probably won't spend that much time and money to do this. But it CAN be done.

Like everyone has said. Rip out the HD and destroy it, or if you happen to have a electromagnetic degausser just collecting dust somewhere you may want to put it to use here.

If you got the cash you could give this site a try.

http://www.datadev.com/easycdduplication/govdes.html

 

[1Mistake2006]

I just got out of the Feds on a drug charge and you really have to smash your HD...otherwise use PGP...each person has to use it and they couldn't get into it.I believe the actual version I had back then was a hot copy from Japan not for import to the US.

J

 

[party_booye]

what u wanna do if u want to be safe is throw the pc out the window like in zoolander "THE FILES ARE IN THE COMPUTER" SMASH!... "were are all the files"
sorry.
what u want to do as disk clean up wont do a thing- (like someone else posted )what u want to be doing is reformatting the computer- put all the stuff u want to keep on the computer on a disk and reformat the hard drive its easy enough if u know what ur doing- some ppl instead of giving you the windows disk etc will give u a start up disk which makes it even easier to do all you gotta do then is put it in the disk drive and press restart and follow the instructions

 

[blut wump]

The only way to be sure is never to allow the data onto your Hard Drive. If you're paranoid, and who shouldn't be, then use a 'Live CD'. You can download one from Knoppix or Mandrake and a few other places and everything you do during the session stays only in memory unless you decide otherwise. When you switch off, everything not saved is utterly gone.

 

[brewers]

The DEA can do what every they want because they are the law. Just next time use a public computer like the library or a school's computer. How will they track that?

most librarys in my area require you to swipe your card before using the pc. easy to see who was doing what at what time....

 

[obsessis]

I only read the first page but I do IT security stuff and if they have your drive they will find anything they want on it that has been saved. They can do this with your RAM I think also. The RAM might contain the emails that you just read in the webpage form. That shouldn't get written to your hard drive's Temp Internet files but you never know.

you definitely have to destroy your drive. bury it in cement and throw it in the river if you need to get rid of evidence. There are programs that say they work but any DEA office will have the tools to go back and find things. I've used some of these tools before to go back over drives and you'd be amazed at what can be found.

if you use anything that runs while your pc is still operational it won't work. you would have to get a program that writes each bite alternating 010101 and then reverse it and then do that like 100 times.



edit: FORMATTING YOUR DRIVE WILL NOT REMOVE THE DATA!!!! I want to make sure that if you just reinstall your OS and reformat the drive things can STILL be taken off of it with advanced recovery tools. It is not a hard thing for law enforcement to do. This happens to child porn sickos all of the time.

the Bootable CD recommendation is a really good one. If you get a bootable Knoppix disc and boot from that to access Hushmail for anything illegal the only place the info might end up on is your RAM.

 

[bearfx]

You don't want information about your traffic available. The first step is to minimize the amount of information kept on your computer.

1) Sign up for a secure webmail account (hushmail for example).
- This will eliminate any email from being on your PC
- Your email is irretreivable without a proper passphrase
(with hushmail at least)
2) Stop using Internet Explorer. Use Portable Firefox.
- PF is et to not cache your browsing
- No temp files to worry about
- More secure that IE. IE writes your browsing habits everywhere
3) Any personal and confidential files should be stored in secure Truecrypt containers
- Unreadable without the passkey
- Allows creation of "Hidden" encrypted volumes (for plausible deniability)
- Tryecrypt is well tested and respected in cryptographic circles.
4) Tell windows to clear the pagefile everytime you shut down
- Open regedit and browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
- Create the key Value Name:
ClearPageFileAtShutdown
Value Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 1
- This should remove information cached from memory on your hdd

5) Use a secure connection for your internet access (VPN) so your ISP records clean
- I use Relakks.com and recommend them www.relakks.com
- Make certain their privacy policy is sound

 

[TheRide]

Let me make this clearer. NOTHING will keep the technicians at IBM Labs from removing your disk in a clean room from the drive, removing the layers one at a time, and retreiving any information that was ever put on the drive. NOTHING.
The last time I talked to them it was approx $10,000 an hour with a two hour minimum. But that was two years ago so the price may have changed.
Your local prosecutor probably won't spend that much time and money to do this. But it CAN be done.

Ulter is correct - you need to physically destroy the drive. Even fragmented data can be parsed back together using advanced algorithms. This is the extreme but yes, it CAN be done.

 

[Spanky21]

need to run something that removes the magnetic trace of the info on your hard drive, theres plenty of software on the net you can use, just make sure u blow the drive away with a disk cleaner that does better than a one pass zero wipe

 

[bearfx]

You don't even have to use third-party software to do a wipe of the hard drive.

I have a logoff script setup for windows XP
Del /q /s "c:\Documents and Settings\MyProfile\Local Settings\Temp"
Del /q /s "c:\Documents and Settings\MyProfile\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files"
Del /q /s "c:\temp"
Del /q /s "c:\WindowsTemp"

This deletes most temporary files from the computer. Then you can run

Cipher /w:c:\

This will do a three pass wipe of the drive. Unless someone REALLY wants to get you, this will make your data irretrievable.

These commands have only been tested under Windows XP Professional