SENF Software — Using Sensitive Number Finder (SENF) Software

ITS Help Documents >> IT Security >> Private Data Software >> Using Sensitive Number Finder (SENF) Software

Overview

SENF (Sensitive Number Finder) is an application written at the University of Texas for the purpose of searching computers for sensitive data. SENF searches through the content of all files looking for matches to the criteria put forth by the author at the University of Texas.
System Requirements: All platforms running Java JVM version 1.5 and later.

These instructions cover:

• Performing a SENF Sensitive Data Search
• Interpreting the Log

Performing a SENF Sensitive Data Search

1. Download SENF to the desktop.

2. Open the .zip archive and extract the files.

3. Open the SENF folder on the desktop.

4. To run the graphical user interface, double click on the senf.jar icon.

5. Alternatively, you can run this command from the terminal: java -jar senf .jar.

6. The search path defaults to the current user's home directory. To change the directory to search, click Browse.

7. Select a directory. Then, click OK. SENF will recursively search the subfolders in that directory.

8. The Minimum number of matches: defaults to 15. Change this value to 1 for a more complete search.

9. Click Scan to start the search.

10. The scan will start. You can see the scanning process in the display field.

Interpreting the Log

1. When SENF is finished searching for files, the list of files with possible matches appears above the General Options section of the window.

2. Click on a filename in that section.

3. A window will pop up with the data that SENF found to match the criteria of a social security number or credit card number.

3. Follow the path reported in the senf forecast window to the file to verify the data and look for other sensitive information in the file. Like Spider, SENF will only report the first occurrence of a match in a file.

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