Leicester unloses key data
Lost USB found in a lunch box
Posted in Management, 11th April 2011 08:31 GMT
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Leicester City Council has found the USB stick containing key codes for several thousand vulnerable residents' front doors.
The stick went missing in mid-March and contained key codes to open boxes outside the homes of users of the council's care service which contained front door keys. The council changed several thousand codes as a precaution.
But it has now found the missing USB stick, in a member of staff's lunch bag.
The council told This is Leicestershire: "We have continued our search for the missing data stick and, as a result, can confirm that it was found over the weekend. As soon the data stick had been recovered, we ran a series of tests on it which indicated that the data on it has not been accessed during the period the device was missing.
"We are continuing with our investigation into the incident and will report fully on its findings as soon as this has been completed."
Leicester City Council had informed the Information Commissioner's Office of its gaffe, presumably the council can now share the good news. ®
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COMMENTS
Please help calibrate my BS meter
"we ran a series of tests on it which indicated that the data on it has not been accessed during the period the device was missing."
Is this actually possible? It sounds like the just the kind of BS an organisation comes out with to provide some reassurance to an unquestioning idiocracy.
Of course, I could be being unfair...
"We ran a series of tests...."
Translation: We looked at the "Last Access Time" file attribute and hoped it wasn't accessed by someone who knew how to reset it - or how to avoid modifying it in the first place - or who used a decent raw copy utility - or, or, or.....
Obviously the key wasn't securely encrypted in the first place, otherwise there would be no panic.
Genuine question
Genuine question - educate me! How do you check if data has been accessed?
Hey AC, I think you dropped this >>>> 's'
To do it once is forgiveable, but to repeat the mistake requires intervention.
The word you are looking for is 'descent'. You have marred a phrase that could possibly have gone on to live in internet folklore, and possibly spawned a whole dynasty of 'planet Fail' spin-offs (escape from; ascent from; born on) Maybe even a movie tie-in - "It came from planet Fail"? But now it will probably end its days on a grammar pedant website being repeatedly dragged out to amuse the public as a curiosity in a grammatical freak show.
Sorry for the overreaction to a harmless dropped 's' but I need sleep and can no longer tell where the internet finishes and the voices in my head begin.
Genuine answer
Genuine answer - you can't.
Presumably they've checked the "last accessed" time stamp on the files. It's very easy to avoid updating this stamp when reading a file, and it's also fairly trivial to later change the stamp to an arbitrary value.
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