New Forensic Tool Makes Searching XBox Hard Drives Easier
By Ron on Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 12:27 PM PST In Game Consoles, Game Related Laws, Game Related Science, Microsoft, Microsoft
Everyone knows that there’s a lot of illicit material on the internet. Everyone also knows that there a lot of enforcement efforts directed at finding the PCs that are the source for this type of content.
As you may or may not know, this has resulted in a number of criminals storing things they want to keep hidden on their XBox hard drives. According to authorities, this includes a fair amount of child pornography.
You see, the original XBox hard drive has always been able to be modified to make the console act like a PC. Interestingly, there’s no physical evidence this has been done. With current forensics software, investigators cannot examine the bit by bit information stored on the XBox hard drive, meaning that it stays hidden.
In an effort to alleviate this issue, David Collins, a computer scientist at Sam Houston State University, has created a tool that allows authorities to find these hidden files. The program, known as XFT, is the first ever developed for forensic technicians to read XBoxes. Not only does the tool read the information, it record the investigation as it takes place, and allows the recording to be replayed in court.
Now, I know some of you may want to scream about your privacy for your files, but in my opinion, anything that shows that these people are not actually gamers is fine with me. Don’t we have enough of a black eye with the general public? I think so. What we don’t need is for investigators to find a child pornographer storing files on his XBox, and publish news referring to him as a gamer.
What do you think?
i think a few people might read about this being successful and assume when we aint playing games were watching child porn.
lets face it, people do tend to jump the gun and leap blindly to the wrong conclussion.