BreachExchange mailing list archives

Re: (update) UT: U. patient records recovered


From: "TS Glassey" <tglassey () earthlink net>
Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2008 09:36:34 -0800

You mean the User ID of the File/Tape Owner didn't exist on your system - 
yeah this happens on many systems still. But hey - my point was that if you 
were trying to stop someone who knew what they were doing, the claims made 
by the Newspaper in response to their article are simply wrong IMHO.


Todd
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Al Mac Wheel" <macwheel99 () wowway com>
To: "TS Glassey" <tglassey () earthlink net>; "Michael Hill, CITRMS" 
<mhill () idtexperts com>; <dataloss () attrition org>
Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 7:33 AM
Subject: Re: [Dataloss] (update) UT: U. patient records recovered


I agree, but it is also OS dependent what can be done, since different OS
have different features for media support.
Plus the market can demand something better.  Look at the growth in
encrypted backup support.

I once got a tape which my OS refused to load.
"This tape was created by PACIFIC, who is not a user on your system."
Since I had security officer access, I created user PACIFIC on our system,
and was able to load the tape.
With IBM media, it is an issue of who owns the data, and who has what
access privileges.  User PACIFIC has access privileges.  No other IBM OS
will accept that data unless that computer system has a user by that name.

The # of usages XX,XXX I believe is related to looking at the magnetics of
the media & doing an estimate from the wear, which is why I say I do not
believe the accuracy is good enough for this purpose.  If it was, the
backup log would record # usages, the restore log would record #, we would
get an error message if difference is unexpected.

There is a heck of a lot more on the volume than the serial #.  Right now
with IBM OS there's a date component ... "You are restoring from backup
made 6/22 ... your most recent backup was 7/2" in other words it 
recognizes
that we are not restoring from the latest backup media.

Folks - a tape is a 100% passive reading system. The processes which would
have watermarked this for each use actually have to write on the tape's
header or in other locations. And gee whiz,  depending on what type of
tape this was, that simply may not be possible.

If it is a random access tape then this might work, but say its a
streaming media cartridge. All that the hosting system gets is the
cartridge's serial number so it really cannot tell how many times a tape
was used.

The system Michael talks about below is part of an integrated volume
management system which most OS's don't have. If this tape or tape
cartridge (which is much more likely) was just copied from say a Unix
system with DUMP or just DD there would be no record created on the media
what so ever.

Todd Glassey CISM CIFI

----- Original Message ----- From: "Al Mac Wheel" <macwheel99 () wowway com>
To: "Michael Hill, CITRMS" <mhill () idtexperts com>; 
<dataloss () attrition org>
Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 6:01 AM
Subject: Re: [Dataloss] (update) UT: U. patient records recovered


, Michael Hill, CITRMS wrote:

<snip>


   Before this afternoon's news conference, attorney Scot Boyd, who 
is
representing 11 plaintiffs and potentially "hundreds" more in that
lawsuit, couldn't say whether the recovery of the tapes would
nullify > the
lawsuit. But in court filings, he wrote that it wouldn't, noting the
thieves could copy the information and return the original tapes.

Can you detect whether a tape has been copied?  Can any techies out 
there
answer that?

On IBM OS, you can get statistics on backup media # of usages & estimated
life.
For example: this media is rated for 1 million usages, and so far it has
had XX,XXX usages.  I do not know how accurate it is, I have not used it
for this purpose.  The act of accessing the media to get the latest 
count,
that is also a usage.

How I have used it for backup media ... I have a mountain of backup media
used in rotation.  From time to time some wear out.  I can use this to 
warn
me that some media is approaching the end of its useful life span.

Usages includes reading in a copy to any other media, or upload to some
computer system.  Depending on how the data on the media is organized, 
you
can also get at the # usages of various files, libraries, records
etc.  With backup media, they should all be consistent with ... save /
verify / restore, except where you know you used that media to restore a
small volume of problem areas.

A problem with the latter could be that it is a feature of the IBM OS 
that
any time stuff is accessed using that OS, certain aspects of the
description of the objects are incremented by the usage count, but 
suppose
the media is accessed by some other OS, that does not have that same
security feature standard, or suppose the crooks have the geek skills to
mess with the OS wherever they are operating, to circumvent or turn off
some of the stuff the OS normally does.

<snip>

Al Macintyre
i/geek
Programmer etc. on IBM Midrange platforms


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_______________________________________________
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http://attrition.org/dataloss

Tenable Network Security offers data leakage and compliance monitoring
solutions for large and small networks. Scan your network and monitor your
traffic to find the data needing protection before it leaks out!
http://www.tenablesecurity.com/products/compliance.shtml


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