It is very simple to setup encryption if they are using Windows 2000/XP. By enabling EFS (Encrypting File Systems) that is built into the Windows operating system they can prevent unauthorized access to the data on the hard drive. Even if a boot disk is used to wipe out the Admin password they still won't be able to read the encrypted data.

>Even if a boot disk is used to wipe out the Admin password they still won't be able to read the encrypted data.

They would also need to use Syskey level 2 encryption or EFS protection is worthless: just run the SAM through rainbow tables and get the admin / user password, and direct access to the EFS data.

Another example of Microsoft's inability to create useful software, rainbow tables can be defeated with simple hash salting.

Moike, good point. Still fairly simple deployment.

I would bet some were taken by employees and reported missing. Good ones are expensive but Uncle Sam replaces them free to the user.

Any loss of a weapon or laptop results in an mandatory Office of Professional Responsibility investigation in the FBI. Any individual lying or displaying lack of candor during such investigation is subject to immediate termination. It would be foolish to risk a career over a laptop. Strong encryption programs are available and after this type of publicity, there are going to be alot of questions asked about anyone who does not use them.

I think the point of the mater is they shouldn't be losing laptops, and classified information should not leave the building it's housed in. What happened to the two-lock rule (classified information has to have at least 2 locks or 2 ways to prevent accesses)? For example the federal building is one and a locked cabinet or safe is 2 (offices don't count to many people have keys to those).

Irecently found a dell lap top in the middle of a feild in waxahatchie tx. It had been there for a while and was weatherd so i didnt really think it would work, the hinges were also broke, so i just put it on the shelf above the piano, were i forgot about it for about a year, Until i was at a freind of a freinds house and mentioned it , he had a power cord for it , so i got it down fixed the hinges cleaned it up and much to my surprise it booted right up, windows XP , now i went thru files looking for the owner , i found him,and her, called them ,they lived outside of Dallas Tx , Made arrangements , i would since i lived in Italy TX and they in richardson tx. , leave it with the receptionist at my place of employment, life,like,laboratory, in Farmers Branch TEXAS ,where they would have a third party pick it up, i guess they did but i never verified it with front desk, any way there were a couple things that got my attention while looking for a phone number , well not noing about the missing labtops i just figured this phone list in witch was a list of all women and strangely enough it was put togather by a third party for hire he noted his name , Gerry Manders,Can you beleive that, anyway the guy volunteered all kinds of information about how it might have gotten ther, in short It involves a treatment facility For drug addicts , a computer repairman, a police detective,and what i beleive is a case where a innocent young man could have went to jail for the theft of that laptop, but there were two names that log in on that laptop and one of them had a journal and i know for sure that they would not have wanted the other to see, maybe they did see it and thats how the front of it got broke, then they thru, it the feild THe guy told me he had one of his clients from the drug treatment facility over at their residence to work on there pcs , they voluntered this to me, they told me this young man wasw subsequntly arrested on another charge, a detective was assianed to the case but was not able to get any info about the missing labtop, i feel like ,nobody would risk going to jail ,steele a laptop, just to throw it away.And then when questioed by detectives not tell wher they could find it. Ther was software on this laptop wich was a password and pertsonal info all of personnel bank account numbers, even pin numbers plus pay pal account , ebay accounts nomatter who you were you could access all these accounts automaticly i noticed that activity in the ebay log ,this is where i found the name of one of the two names that log on to windows xp only thing is you didnt need a password, just like all the other what i would think was very important information and would be protected, but odddly enough they had that software that would fill in all pertnant info accordingly , everything all the person with the laptop would have to do is pick wher they wanted to go shopping are moving funds about, cause ther were several bank accounts as i re3call. any way im starting to wonder about this whole privacy thing now is it not what these software people lead the surfer to beleive, i dont consider surfers to be users so i wondered why they would , and then ,about this time i with only a g.e.d. was trying to educate myself to the ways of the world, let me say , first i realizeed my lack of education was a blessing, for if i had of went to colledge,i might have subcomed to what i was finding out thru hundreds of hours of research, to be a well , total shock to me,i allways knew that our laws were disscriment against me,and that the law inforcment industry had , like my name on a blacklist, what i discoverede was more like a disenfranchised list , to strip core humans like my self from ever finding out about the way corparate america does buisseness in commerce, on the I-35 CORRIDORE, strangly enough i reallized even thow at many locations i allways lived within this key zone the runways of love feild would cut thru my house, i figuered out i had to have been a slave my intire life my every move compelled by this huge monster, im getting a little pissed about now, five fellony charges since 1980 in Dallas the first one i was completly framed by the DEA even though my court appointed attorny interveived the guy who did sell the prescription pills he had taken from his mothers purse to undercover dea agents while i was in another part of the house,didnt get me off innocent, i was 17 my freind was only sixteen, he was not charched, j craig jett was my court appointed lawyer, in judge ovards court, i really thought if you were innocent and told the truth you had nothing to worry about, you can imagine how i felt when the dea agents pouinted at me and told the judge that i handed him drugs and he handed me money thus the charge delivery of a controlled substance, wich by the way still carries a 10 year to life in the penitituary, i come home from school my senior year wher three undercover agents arrest me fror delivery, i didnt even know what it meant. any way what i figuered out is that what they really wanted to do was get me in the system once your in the system in Dallas Texas its very hard to ever get out ,2 years probation for something i did not do, so i have been diognosed by a licenced testing facility to be addhd of the residual kind , whatever that means,i have self medicated my entire life just trying to exercise my god given intelecual rights,battling this enemy i thought was addiction, turn out that was taken from me and replaced with a gueid in commerce if you will.starting to get a little creepy, about now, after two stays in the mental ward at parkland hospital in astraight jacket at times i saw a picture of me in the file.,two stays at greenhills rehab and two month long stays at pinestreet drug rehabe and two beatings by the Dallas police dept in wich required treatment in the emergency room at parkland , both times they never even wrote me a traffic ticket,dozens of illegal serges and violating my cival rights was the way i thought the whole country was like, i never have sued anyone in my life, and did not pursue these things out of straght up fear. Now after much research have discoverd a direct link to my birth certificate well its the return if you will of it , turns out that i have this account in commerce a corporate account in wich my name spelled a certain way The way you would spell it in elementary school Capital first letter followed by all lower case wasw in fact the reason for all the bade things that had happened to me in my life including eight drug overdoses the first acuring when i was only 11 or 12 eight secondal jack danials whiskey followed off with lighter fluid squirted onto the mattress whith a towel between my face and it, jumped from my schoolmate steve inmans 2nd story apt window, were i was later pulled out of the deep end of the swimming pool uncontiance,7 more times i was revived over the years after overdosing, at this point i had also lost about as many kids i hung around with to this machine the us treasury controlls. And to think we were marked from birth, i was met with the same crap if i dare mention this , you kno w crazy , belongs in a institution ect, and you can bet your ass i for sure would have been dead incarcerated or institutionalized if things had went the way they always did go for these ,,,,i just dont have the words to describe pure evil, so this is only a small amount of the things i can tesstifi to , remember i realize that i would not be writting these words unless this is purely the works of god our a i am a part of a political battle that is based on the gathering of intelligence that has been going on since probably early 1900s when rockefellows and davenports paid off senators and rush legislation thru during christmas break much like the patriot act was done more recently,and must have been deep undercover are at least tracked by the seekers of freedom and whats right, at the same time my every move not my own but compelled by some one or some group are society are maybe part of the us goverment, but to this day have never been debreifed are even recongnized for my struggles,thats really not what this is about , i was just going to tell about the laptop i found, robert dells, and one thing led to another i am so disillutioned by this world and have been an army of one i dont even think anyone even cares about anything other than money and power, at this time , i bounce back and forth between the truth being broughtforth and suicide, why would any one want to live in a world where every word in a way to big dictionary be carefully written to mean one thing for the elite but have legal meanings to the common wich has allowed thwm to enslave a intire nation. even our constitution is meaningless when you finde the truth out it was wrote to have multiple meanings exsploited by lawyers who ether dilleberatly are were compelled to give places on all levelsw for this monster to hide nameless faceless and to keep a mainstrem reality so differant than the t5ruth it would make it almostr imimpossible to figure out much less put an end to.I have proof of all these things that have happened in our past all laying out what will become the most important event in the world you will see that the only way to win our freedom was patiance and time and for the good of mans intelligence to supersede the bad undetected and with this acheived , awhile back i would guess these elite thru there manipulation of the system controlled every peice of legislation the intire4 goverment,however they didnt figure in equation what a true american and there are millions who sacrificed to make this possible tenacious and with ath freespirit from within fought all this time , thousands of lifetimes thousands past just like my own recorded by the system that enslaved us in what i have phrased as perfect law, for every thing that will be nesssarry for this to end is allready done ,not requiring us to do anything other than break the story are end up with one small legal issue in a dallas county courtroom , over a suspended drivers licence, are some small event that would trigger a string of events that could not be stopped in thousands of cases the evidence the defendants would argue would on the other side of there clever manipulation of the langage they would have allready argued in favor of with thousands of hours of court transcripps even the supreme court who i feel is not supreem at all, to close each case before any victems have to tesstifie not in the traditional sence where a grand jury would rule if a case should move forward but in the respect that the evidence is in every way so overwhelming that there was no need for a trial ''PERFECT LAW "" WORDS from current events that seem to be new to some of us will help us understand and grab ahold of the basic vehicle in wich evil controlled without the basic ideal our minds just simply could not deal wi=th something of this magnitude,here are some words that will help us understand, insurgent, embedded, real time, person, individual,humanbeing,entity;people,high society.counterinsurgents. theres much more if anyone cares to know. thats about it. 4 now P,>S this was exhausting to write and im not going to proof read if you dont understand you can call me at 972-483-7443 and i will exsplain it to you.

Oh yes! EFS is useless. Minimal protection against only the most casual techs.

For those looking to protect laptops, you should invest in a solution that encrypts the entire disk (preferred) with pre-boot authentication (presentation of the secret). There's obviously more to it than this, but check out Pointsec and Utimaco for commercial solutions. I have used both, and like them both.

For those of us who like free (who doesn't like free!?), check out TrueCrypt on SourceFourge and Compusec. I have used Compusec and have been impressed, but I have not tried TrueCrypt.

Things happen, and people lose things. If you are going to bring your data (via laptop, PDA, flash drive, etc.) with you, encrypt it!

My $.02

wow, if it wouldn´t be reported in a serious paper I wouldn´t believe it.
Another way to get what sombody usually never would get. Perhaps they have been sold? I am just wondering while the datas still didn´t appear at www. Wasn´t there a case where telefon numbers from FBI have been published a few years ago.