CIA found five computers, ten hard drives, some USB disks and DVDs from the Osama Bin Laden's compound in Pakistan. It's clear that thumb drives and DVD's were carried through courier.  It's kind of potential treasure of data for the US. Which may contain Al-Qaida's current and future operations. But it's not as simple at it sounds. Osama Bin Laden (OBL) was smart enough to encrypt his whole computers, which is not easy to crack if he used a difficult passphrase. It's said that Osama used PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), Truecrypt or their own Mujahideen Secrets data encryption software to encrypt his hard drives.

To crack the encryption "dictionary attack" or "brute force" method would be applied, which is trying the combination of words, alphanumeric characters and symbols, which takes decades to crack through this process. So they are creating a smart dictionary which would contain words related to OBL and the previously seized contents, according to AccessData, a forensic software provider to govt. However, cracking encryption becomes easier if they get the live snapshot of the RAM. DOMEX is the acronym of Army level process of Document and Media Exploration. The army confirmed that it provided tactical DOMEX teams in Afghanistan in past. But it's still unknown which government agency will do cracking of encryption, and whether in the US or any secret place in Afghanistan.

Well did you encrypt your data? You can try Truecrypt, it's free.


Also, read

Community to Stop Badware-Malware, Phishing, Virus

An email address with an expiry date

How to create anonymous web links

What is a ransomware?

Install a firewall on Xiaomi MIUI smartphones to restrict network activities