Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Monday June 14 2021, @08:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the quis-custodiet-ipsos-custodes dept.

Despite all the sterling work put in by malware writers, scammers and whatnot to teach people not to trust computers, people still need to learn that reading or finding something on a computer doesn't automatically make it true. And this also applies to people whose job is find stuff on computers.

Digital forensics experts prone to bias, study shows (The Guardian)

Ian Walden, a professor of information and communications law at Queen Mary, University of London, said there was a tendency to believe the machine. "This study shows that we need to be careful about electronic evidence," Walden said. "Not only should we not always trust the machine, we can't always trust the person that interprets the machine."

[...] The study, [upcoming] , found that the examiners who had been led to believe the suspect might be innocent documented the fewest traces of evidence in the files, while those who knew of a potential motive identified the most traces.

With caching by the browser, hidden and invisible text on web pages, data retrieved by malware and probably many more ways, how can you show the user was even aware of something "suspicious" found on their computer. Even a small disk or SSD is far too big for one person to be able to know all the data on it.

Journal Reference:
Nina Sunde, Itiel E. Drorb. A hierarchy of expert performance (HEP) applied to digital forensics: Reliability and biasability in digital forensics decision making [open], Forensic Science International: Digital Investigation (DOI: 10.1016/j.fsidi.2021.301175)


Original Submission

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(1)
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 14 2021, @08:33PM (12 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 14 2021, @08:33PM (#1145221) Journal

    Depending on your browser settings, you may be "visiting" all sorts of sites, like silk road drug sales and kiddie porn sites.

    https://www.imperva.com/learn/performance/prefetching/ [imperva.com]

    Our computers aren't exactly monitored, but they are checked from time to time. I was called into HR one day, and asked about some questionable sites. Nope, I never saw or heard of those, why do you think I was on them? Well, turns out, the time stamps were all at times in the morning when I was the only maintenance guy around. Had to be me - so I asked for a printout of all those offending sites.

    Took me a couple days, but I figured out that all that preloading was what got me. In my case, there was nothing illegal, the sites merely violated company policy. Thank God for that!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @09:04PM (10 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @09:04PM (#1145238)

      What sites are you going to that preload kiddie porn??? You sounds pretty dodgy.

      • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @09:06PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @09:06PM (#1145241)

        youtube

      • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @09:17PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @09:17PM (#1145253)

        Obviously Bing.com

      • (Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 14 2021, @09:24PM (7 children)

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 14 2021, @09:24PM (#1145257) Journal

        you may be "visiting" all sorts of sites, like silk road drug sales and kiddie porn sites.

        Reading comprehension, much?

        • (Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @10:48PM (6 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @10:48PM (#1145293)

          Says right in the title, "Don't trust the person". In this case, that would be Runaway. Plausible denial.

          • (Score: 5, Interesting) by anubi on Tuesday June 15 2021, @02:29AM (5 children)

            by anubi (2828) on Tuesday June 15 2021, @02:29AM (#1145344) Journal

            Is there some sort of "cancel culture" going on here?

            Runaway brings up the very thing I think is the most unsafe, risky, insecure concept to ever grace the internet, and lots of folks try to cancel him out.

            This concept is also known as "push technology", and is used to ram things into your machine that you did not request.

            https://duckduckgo.com/?q="push+technology" [duckduckgo.com]

            Even in government/corporate where "secret" is given much lip service, yet they still push insecure computing protocols.

            Ive seen this going on for 25 years now, but if I make a fuss over it, I lose my job. They have me sign papers with the words "responsible engineer" printed below where I am to sign. Now I am either shown to be incompetent if I do, insubordinate if I don't.

            --
            "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
            • (Score: 5, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Tuesday June 15 2021, @09:45AM (4 children)

              by PiMuNu (3823) on Tuesday June 15 2021, @09:45AM (#1145438)

              Lots of people? All I see is Anonymous Coward posting. Someone has a bung in their backside and posts AC a million times again Runaway (whose post is quite interesting). I think it is pretty scummy TBH.

              • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday June 15 2021, @09:46AM (3 children)

                by PiMuNu (3823) on Tuesday June 15 2021, @09:46AM (#1145439)

                Meant to type "against Runaway"

                • (Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Tuesday June 15 2021, @10:20AM (2 children)

                  by anubi (2828) on Tuesday June 15 2021, @10:20AM (#1145443) Journal

                  When I read Runaway's post, and how he was moderated, I guess I felt I had to jump in the fray too.

                  Runaway had restated what many of us here, being computer professionals, have been warning about for decades. Push Technology. Something is bad wrong if we become compelled to eat whatever someone hands us. Most of our computers on the internet are programmed to do just that. Its a wide open invitation for all sorts of computer mischief.

                  I could not stand by and watch such an important comment moderated into obscurity.

                  New people are seeing these forums for the first time every day and may not be privy to what many of us have been aware of for decades.

                  I feel this travesty needs to be exposed every chance we get.

                  To me, Runaway has a +5 informative post.

                  We can't get this thing fixed until we get the non-techies to demand it as well. I can trust every machine I have to do what its supposedly designed to do.... Except my computer.

                  --
                  "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @01:30PM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @01:30PM (#1145478)

                    We can't get this thing fixed until we get the non-techies to demand it as well.

                    You got the funding? Otherwise they pay me pretty fucking good to write COBOL, not work on web browsers.

                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16 2021, @06:29AM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16 2021, @06:29AM (#1145782)

                    POOR VICTIMS! There's not a single cancel in any of the parents. You lying scumbag victim shitheads. Cancel me now?

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by tyler on Tuesday June 15 2021, @12:23PM

      by tyler (6335) on Tuesday June 15 2021, @12:23PM (#1145464) Homepage

      Supply chain attacks are also an issue. Suppose a web site is using some niche JS library imported from the internet. It gets compromised and the attackers use it to do something illegal like fetch kiddie porn from A and send it to B. That will show up in your company's web filter if they have one.

  • (Score: 2) by Nuke on Monday June 14 2021, @09:28PM (2 children)

    by Nuke (3162) on Monday June 14 2021, @09:28PM (#1145259)

    FTFA

    people still need to learn that reading or finding something on a computer doesn't automatically make it true.

    This is true.

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @12:16AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @12:16AM (#1145310)

      When your hardware and OS are run by Jews, they can plant anything they like, and if you objected to pushing transgender bullshit on 3 year olds in a post you made 10 years ago, you're now a political enemy and the Jewish perverts at Mossad would be happy to plant some of their own stash if it meant silencing one noisy Goy.

    • (Score: 2) by slinches on Tuesday June 15 2021, @04:37AM

      by slinches (5049) on Tuesday June 15 2021, @04:37AM (#1145378)

      This is true.

      I don't believe you.

  • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @10:54PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @10:54PM (#1145295)

    Maybe all that porn, perversion and profanity wasn't Hunter's fault. And those pictures and the money from Russia and Ukraine and Chins... uh, he were hip-mo-tized. They blinded him with science... and we must always believe the science.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @12:18AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @12:18AM (#1145312)

      And those weren't actually emails on #CrookedHillary's computer, they were recipes.

      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @03:50AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @03:50AM (#1145367)

        "To serve babies"? Why would babies need a servant?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @05:01AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @05:01AM (#1145383)

      I heard he also had a video of some orange colored dude with hot Russian chicks peeing all over him. Man, THAT sounds really messed up.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @02:22PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @02:22PM (#1145499)

        I'll bet it pissed that orange colored dude off.

(1)