Rove investigator erases his PCs - to kill computer virus
Outside firm performs seven-level wipe
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A US official overseeing a probe of former Bush aide Karl Rove has been called on the carpet after it was discovered he hired a private computer-help company to erase all the hard drives belonging to him and two deputies.
Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch bypassed his own agency's computer technicians and instead hired an outside firm to perform a seven-level wipe, all but guaranteeing the files could never be restored. Although the official said he contracted the work after suspecting his computer was infected by a virus, a manager with the private firm said a wipe that thorough is an unusual way to treat a malware infection. The receipt for the work performed makes no mention of a virus.
Bloch's office is investigating whether Rove and other White House officials improperly used government agencies to help re-elect Republicans running from Congressional seats. In turn, Bloch has been the subject of a White House-ordered probe into whether he improperly retaliated against whistle-blowers in his own staff and dismissed cases brought to his agency.
Following the revelation of the computer wipes, federal investigators have requested Bloch turn over copies of personal files that he saved to his America Online account before his hard disk was scrubbed. Bloch has refused, saying the data, which included medical information, messages to his personal attorney and pictures from his son's tours of duty in Iraq, don't involve his official work.
Bloch also says no documents relevant to any investigation have been purged. He has denied retaliating against whistle-blowers, characterizing the investigation, which began in 2005, as a "fishing expedition."
Coverage from the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post is available here and here. ®
COMMENTS
@What is a 7 level wipe?
It's what the feculent little republican scumbags are doing to their arses with the constitution, of course.
Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Very old drives (and floppys) used stepper motors to position the heads. These drives moved the heads in tiny steps and just counted the number of steps to position the head. These ended up in different locations depending on which direction the head had approached from, as well as thermal expansion and wear. To keep this from being an operational problem the tracks were very wide, and the write heads were wider than the read heads. The read head would thus end up in a cleanly-written region, while old data might still be readable a quarter track over.
Drives have gone through much evolution since that time. Today there is basically no room on the disk surface for traces of old data. Clever head positioning designs actually have to cancel out the traces of valid data on either side as part of keeping the head centered over the current track. Pretty much like putting your face really close to the pavement and steering by making slight adjustments to keep both eyes seeing an equal amount of black pavement and white centerline. The clever part is that you can stay on your broken centerline even when the road is densely covered with other broken centerlines, as long as the other centerlines are mostly randomly broken.
Anyway, the whole point is that a single write on a modern drive gets rid of the old data on that track. Writing more than once is a hold-over from very old technology. If that's what you are focused on you'll probably miss some of the other vulnerabilities, such as bad sector and bad track remapping.
OK. That's the technology point of view. We still haven't gotten close to the answer of why there was a paranoid-level of erasing done due to a "virus".
I smell the hand of a rat at work with a big left handed smokescreen
The rat he is investigating has an awful lot of rat fink friends in justice thanks to oily alberto and co and what better way to derail an investigation to keep him away from all the hundreds of buried skeletons that make ex President Nixon's look like saints in comparison!
Now if you throw in a few red herrings and investigate the investigator by calling in his fellow rats placed in key positions in Justice Department by the redoubtable oily alberto before he left , just in case some one gets far to close to the truth of his numerous rat deeds ! You will then cast doubts and cloud the public mind on the ability of the investigator to deliver an impartial investigation !
Hands up all those with notebooks and laptops who routinely use the recovery discs to reinstall their wifi enhanced mobile toys more often then the home desktop , or install the biggest latest hard drive that can fit into the unit ? , and about every so often buy another unit which has more storage faster and all that too gee whiz factor toys to boot !
After the Don Siegelman affair in 2006 , along with other numerous fake public show trials not delivering the goods , the the ability of the US Justice Department to deliver real justice is very questionable indeed !
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