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        Database Security >> Database Security >> DBF FILE READERS
        
(Message started by: Pete Finnigan on Jun 8^th, 2007, 6:15pm)

Title: DBF FILE READERS
Post by Pete Finnigan on Jun 8^th, 2007, 6:15pm

Hello All:
I am somewhat new to Oracle and still learning. We have encountered an issue where during zipping and encrypting of our coldbackup files a few such as the undo01.dbf file was encrypted but the original remained un-encrypted and moved to tape. My question is simple, if a tape was ever lost is it possible for someone to view individual dbf files without having to restore through Oracle by using some sort of dbf viewer that will let them read any data in a text format.

Title: Re: DBF FILE READERS
Post by Pete Finnigan on Jun 8^th, 2007, 8:43pm

Hi,

Yes its possible. there are a number of individual people who have written block reading software. There are also a numbre of companies doing the same. Oracle has a tool called DUL that does the same. There are also tools intrnal to Oracle that can read blocks without the database being up. There is the BBED tool shipped with Oracle databases that does the same and finally there is Unix strings command.

Dont let you datafiles out of your site, even without a database the data can be read

cheers

Pete

Title: Re: DBF FILE READERS
Post by Pete Finnigan on Jun 11^th, 2007, 2:49pm

Thanks Pete. I came across MyDul and Dude which are examples of such programs.

Title: Re: DBF FILE READERS
Post by Pete Finnigan on Jun 11^th, 2007, 5:01pm

I would also watch this space as David L has started an open source project to create tools to perform forensic analysis of an Oracle database. he is also writing a book on the same subject. I would fully expect this toolkit to include tools capable of reading data directly from blocks.

cheers

Pete