Tutorial 4 (Computer Forensics)

Recently I went to get fingerprinted for a new job, I went in expecting to be getting my hands inky, pressing each finger against a piece of paper (I guess I was ready to dramatize the process like I had always seen it done on TV). But to my surprise it wasn't in a florescent lit police station, but in a small UPS store with equipment like you might see on CSI. Instead of ink and paper, I put my fingers on a glass pad that scanned them and then uploaded them digitally.

Photo Created by Christina Angelakos, copyright 2011.

This got me thinking about our brief session on Computer Forensics in our Security Lesson. There are some amazing technological tools being used right now to determine and prevent crimes. Among some of the crimes being prevented through Computer forensics are...

-Unauthorized Disclosure of Information

-Industrial Espionage

-Fraud

-Also used in Data Recovery

Computer Forensic Scientists use a lot of different tools to prevent these crimes. According to an article written by Steve Hailey the President and CEO of CyberSecurity Institute, Computer Forensics can be broken down into a few basic processes,

1. Prevention-This includes making copies of the original data in order to ensure data safety.

2. Identification-This phase includes sifting through data to find information pertinent to the case.

3. Extraction-Extracting the pertinent info and then saving it to a file or disk.

4. Interpretation-Using Experts to decide if the information is truly important to the case or not.

5. Documentation-This phase is important throughout the case, since without documentation it would not hold up in a legal battle.

The article goes into great detail of the Forensic Process including examples of cases in which Computer Forensics have been used.

You can read the article for yourself at http://www.cybersecurityinstitute.biz/forensics.htm.

Some famous crimes have been solved using Computer Forensics...for example the infamous BTK killer, Dennis Rader, was found out because of a letter he sent the police in a floppy disk. Forensics was able to trace the disk back to Rader, ending a killing spree that had spanned 30 years. Another example is the end of the largest CD manufacturing piracy scheme in the United States, called “Operation Remaster” ended with the help of a forensics lab called the Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory (RCFL) sponsored by the FBI.

For more information about cases solved by the FBI and RCFL using Computer Forensics read this article...http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2008/april/rcfl_042908.

Below is a clip of what can happen when all your assets are on computers and what you can do to prevent losing it all.

IBM Linux Commercial. [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78XRwWwUkow.

Ok, so maybe this would never happen in real life and maybe your solution isn't a Linux. But its a pretty funny commercial and it just goes to show you how important it is to have security for your computers. And thankfully we have the technology to catch criminals and even prevent security risks from happening. Computer Forensics is a growing field with many different uses. To learn more about the types of jobs Computer Forensic Technicians hold or more about the men and women working in this field go to http://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/19-4092.00.