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Re: noatime

To: linux-xfs@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: noatime
From: Bernd Petrovitsch <bernd@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2004 00:36:45 +0100
In-reply-to: <1075751733.13701.11.camel@david.internal.NorcrossGroup.com>
Organization: http://www.firmix.at/
References: <115.2e2700bf.2d4bf471@aol.com> <20040130175756.A23646@infradead.org> <Pine.LNX.4.58.0401310332290.1212@zen.canint.timetraveller.org> <1075751733.13701.11.camel@david.internal.NorcrossGroup.com>
Sender: linux-xfs-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxx
On Mon, 2004-02-02 at 20:55, Greg Freemyer wrote:
[...]
> Part of my company does computer forensics.  As part of that our
> forensics team might testify in court that 
> 
> "Rob created a flat file export of the Customer Database on Dec 15, 03. 
> He accessed this flat file at 2pm, Feb 2, 04.  This is 2 hours after he
> was notified that he was being fired, so it is possible that he was
> making an improper copy to use outside the company."
>
> Obviously the above is not rock-solid evidence of IP theft, but it is
> far stronger than if the access time was not available.  

Given the possibilities to fake that info it is[0] (for usage in court
or similar) probably better to actually have no atime.

> I know our forensic team wishes that all computers would maintain a much
> better history of access times than just the most recent.

But if you (or someone) wants to use it in court (or similar) it should
not be easy to fake[0]. So this rules almost all computer-related stuff
completely out.

> I guess what I'm saying is, if you are maintaining valuable info on a
> computer and the possibility of having to litigate about its use exists,
> then having access times available to a computer forensic examiner is a
> good idea.

Yes. But time info on an a computers harddisk is far from "valuable"
because it is quite easy to manipulate it[0].

Sorry for OT ....
        Bernd

[0]: Yes, this depends on circumstances etc.
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