1.
Apr 26, 2008 4:33 PM
in response to:
PCWorld
Re: Knock, Knock, It's the FBI
That'd be a fun trojan to make. Something that automatically accesses http servers that the FBI has set up to watch. Kick open an http socket, do some recursive http GET commands, and the whole company is boned.
Now all you have to do to silence a blogger who says things that you don't like is make his computer (or router) access the wrong server.
This just underscores the necessity for having off-site backups. Secret ones, at that. Reason being, if any form of police, local, county, state or federal come and grab your computer equipment, they'll grab all of your backups as well, and you're not likely to see any of that equipment or media again EVER. Even if you do, it'll be years before it's returned, and probably obsolete AND broken.
So having multiple backups stored at undisclosed locations means the warrant isn't likely to cover all copies of your data. You'll at least be back in business as soon as you purchase new copies of ALL of your computer hardware and restore the backup to it. You'll still lose a week or two of data and from thousands to millions of dollars worth of hardware, but nothing like losing EVERYTHING, and not being able to process payroll.
Otherwise, game over, you're out of business. All records are lost in legal limbo indefinitely. You can have your lawyer demand copies, but they only have to be generated a reasonable period before a trial, and if a trial isn't scheduled, or is postponed for years, your data will just sit in an evidence locker until some cop with sticky fingers steals it.
Another critical lesson this teaches is to outsource. If your payroll, data and records are on other people's servers, and the FBI breaks down your door, it's a bit less likely they'll go and kick down Google's door, an SVN repository's door, the door of a payroll management company that handles hundreds of companies, etc.
And of course, if you have a business that the current administration doesn't like, be sure to have multiple international mirrors that you can automatically fail over to. After all, the information that you clicked the wrong link can be inserted into a file by anybody with the right knowledge and access.
