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Locate SSN or Credit Card Numbers

As part of the university's global efforts at SSN remediation, the following scanning tools are available for university community members to use to help locate possible files containing SSN and/or credit card numbers.

The Office of the CIO recommends using Find_SSN with the support of your local IT staff or 8help. Find_SSN is an open source tool developed by Virginia Tech. It will do a file search for data that matches the known patterns of Social Security numbers. Find_SSN searches designated locations (e.g. My Documents or a specific folder) and returns the results it believes

Macintosh and Unix Discovery Tools

University members who use Macintosh or Linux based computers are encouraged to use the version of Cornell's Spider designed for those two operating systems. Details on obtaining those software versions can be found here (OS X version) or here (Linux version).

Spider is not the most user friendly tool so once again it is recommended you contact you IT staff before installing or running it on university owned computers.

Employees of the OSU Medical Center should follow the Medical Center's internal Data Security instructions located at http://www.medctr.ohio-state.edu/departments/DataSecurity. Your MedCenter login and password are required.

Using and Installing Virginia Tech's Find_SSN

  1. Step-by-Step Instructions
  2. Technical Information Regarding What Find_SSN Will and Won't Do
  3. Downloading and Installing Find_SSN
  4. Running Find_SSN

Use of this tool...

  • Is at your own risk. Potential users are highly encouraged to carefully read the following documentation and enlist the support of your local IT staff or 8help. Your department may have internal procedures and policies regarding the use of scanning tools.
  • Does not guarantee that SSN or credit card numbers are not on the machine in a format or file that the tool cannot read or cannot access.
  • Does not offer an exception to the existing data handling guidelines concerning SSN or credit card numbers.

Print the Complete Find_SSN Directions:

Using and Installing Virgina Tech's Find SSN

Scanning Tools for DNAs:

Senf

Department Network Adminstrators may want to evaluate the use of Senf. Senf is a fast, portable tool (written in Java, runnable just about everywhere) for finding sensitive numbers. Use this tool to identify files on your system that may have Social Security Numbers (SSNs) or Credit Card Numbers (CCNs). You can download Senf from its homepage here.

Spider

Department Network Administrators may want to evaluate use of Spider. Spider is an open source tool created by Cornell University and freely released to the public that will scour data repositories, like hard drives and removable media, to detect the presence of certain combinations of text or numbers. The program is configured to look specifically for Social Security Numbers and Credit Card Numbers that might be contained inside files stored on a computer. Using and Installing Cornell University's Spider

  1. Step-by-Step Instructions
  2. Before you Begin
  3. Technical Information Regarding What Spider Will and Won't Do
  4. Spider for Windows Requirements
  5. Installing Spider for Windows
  6. Running Spider for Windows

Print the Complete Spider Directions:

Using and Installing Cornell University's Spider

formerly locateSSN.html