Arch Linux

stefano

Member

Registered: 2011-04-09

Posts: 258

Tools for "Sensitive Information Scanning" ?

I am the system administrator of a Linux system owned by the University I work for (my desktop workstation, in fact), and they are asking me to carry out
a scan for sensitive information (SSN, etc)  to get into compliance with university's and state's policies.

They have no clue about Linux systems and directed me to a tool called Identity Finder which is neither free nor available for Linux (Windows only, in fact).
While looking for alternatives, I found several references to a free multi-platform tool called "Spider" written by the Security Lab at Cornell U. However, all links  to it on Cornell's server seems to be dead.

Does anyone know if there is a similar tool available, preferably in the repos?

Cheers,

S.

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 29,529

Website

Re: Tools for "Sensitive Information Scanning" ?

Just encrypt your disk/data and move on.  No such tool would be any good - your university's security policies sound about as brain dead as mine.  What exactly could a tool possibly scan for that would differentiate a SSN from any other bit of data?  Nothing.

But if you must comply with a completely asinine policy, just set a systemd timer to run something like the following:

grep -rl '[0-9][0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]' /* > /var/log/OhDearGod_NineDigitsExist_Here

Last edited by Trilby (2018-04-13 22:54:45)

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"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

stefano

Member

Registered: 2011-04-09

Posts: 258

Re: Tools for "Sensitive Information Scanning" ?

Just encrypt your disk/data and move on.  No such tool would be any good - your university's security policies sound about as brain dead as mine.  What exactly could a tool possibly scan for that would differentiate a SSN from any other bit of data?  Nothing.

But if you must comply with a completely asinine policy, just set a systemd timer to run something like the following:

grep -rl '[0-9][0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]' /* > /var/log/OhDearGod_NineDigitsExist_Here

Well yes, I agree the policy is brain dead, but I doubt my administrators, as silly as they are, are dumb enough to fall for the grep trick you posted....

I will probably encrypt my document folder and be done with it. Even though I really don't like the idea

progandy

Member

Registered: 2012-05-17

Posts: 5,193

Re: Tools for "Sensitive Information Scanning" ?

Identity Finder (or spirion) seems to be available for linux as well: https://support.spirion.com/hc/en-us/ar … ease-Notes
Ugh. I wonder what data that tool reports to the policy owner... So that makes them "trust" you, but what makes you trust them with your data?

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