Computer Forensics & Data Recovery

I was asked recently to find a parental control/ monitoring software for an agency to recommend to parents.  In looking at alot of software that is somewhat expensive for the average family with kids, I found Crawler Parental Control.  This software is FREE.

I installed the software.  I did some initial testing with it.  It looks very good.  The software has computer usage controls.  The program will even save screenshots and email user activity logs.

The usage controls by time are VERY important.  What I have seen time and again in law enforcement.. is kids getting in trouble online after mom and dad are in the bed.  This is especially bad if the computer is in junior’s room.  (Something I consider a safety nightmare for kids.)

If you are going to let junior have a computer in their room, this software allows the administrator to block them from being up secretly in the middle of the night chatting with some stranger.

I have by no means tested this product throughly.  There are ways around it.  I will not go into them.. as to not educate kids trying to get over on mom and dad.

This software is certainly far better than an unprotected unmonitored computer however.

Have you ever had an anti-virus or firewall tell you a file was malware, but you didn’t really think so?  It is a situation I encounter from time to time.  Sometimes, one security program will say one by another company is bad.

Well, there is a free site that helps you get a definitive 2nd, 3rd, 4th… 30th opinion.  It is VirusTotal.com .   A quick upload of the suspicous file to their site then it is scanned by numerous security programs.  This gives you a breadth of opinions on which to base your decision.

Another good way to get additional info, is to search for the file name in Google.  This will usually give some definitive write-ups on the file for anything that has been around for awhile.

Of course if you are in the Gainesville, Florida area… you can always contact me for a second opinion on your trojan, virus, or other malware.

I had a case recently where I had basically three hours  from hands on the computer to finding the evidence. If not the bad guy was going to get out of jail. To make things even more interesting the drives were in a RAID 0 configuration.

Well, I removed the drives, hooked them both to a forensic machine with Tableau write blockers. I fired up X-Ways forensics. I went into the feature to reassemble the RAID. After about 10 to 15 minutes of guessing raid striping size and header location settings, I was into the RAID. Thankfully the data was not hidden, deleted, encrypted or anything interesting like that.

I was able to quickly find the evidence in the case with supporting evidence to show personal possession/ knowledge. I still had enough time left to write arrest paperwork and drive to the jail.

Thanks to X-Ways and some quick work…. one more bad guy waiting for his day in court!

I just wanted to give a little update on my local Gainesville business.  I have been super busy lately! It seems like with every computer repair or data recovery job I do for a University of Florida student or professor I get 3 more jobs.  I am not complaining mind you :)  It just show how valuable word of mouth is among the UF community.

I have been doing more referral work, also.  Other computer shops recommending me, usually after they have given it a shot :)  It is all good.

I just want to thank everyone  who has been recommending me and helping my business take off.  THANKS!!

I haven’t learned all the features of this new release yet,  but I have already used it on two cases here in Gainesville, FL.  It performed great.  Each had thousands of videos and video fragments.  X-ways ran through all of the videos with no crashes.  It doesn’t grab a screen shot from every recovered fragment…. but not every piece of video is playable by any means.   It did go all the way through both cases with no crashes.

Considering what it is doing in grabbing these screen shots from movies…. it is fast too!  Even if it did take the computer 2 hours to run through the movies…  It would have taken me two days to physically open and preview every movie.

This new feature in X-Ways is going to be a HUGE time saver for me!  I can’t recommend it enough to anyone who has to sort through a large volume of movies.