COMPUTER FORENSICS WORLD

A Community of Computer Forensics Professionals

Computer Forensics World is a growing community of professionals involved in the digital forensics industry. It is an open resource, free for all to access and to use. It strongly encourages the sharing of information and peer to peer assistance.

To support this initiative, a range of interactive facilities are available, including surveys, forums and posting areas for information and papers. Please feel free to use all these features.

As with all user groups and communities, its success ultimately depends upon its members. Greater involvement by larger numbers will always create a more vibrant and useful experience. Please join us...

Forum and Directory Now Open Our on-board Discussion Forums are now open, and embrace all aspects of digital and computer forensics. Please do contribute and participate. Equally, we have also added a directory of resources and information for your reference and use.

Posted by Monica on Friday, August 27 @ 11:20:58 EDT (15732 reads) (Read More... | Score: 4.25)

Computer Forensics Basics: Frequently Asked Questions Our latest digital forensics FAQ has now been published: 1. What is Computer Forensics? There a number of slightly varying definitions around. However, generally, computer forensics is considered to be the use of analytical and investigative techniques to identify, collect, examine and preserve evidence/information which is magnetically stored or encoded. 2. What is the objective of this? Usually to provide digital evidence of a specific or general activity. 3. To what ends? A forensic investigation can be initiated for a variety of reasons. The most high profile are usually with respect to criminal investigation, or civil litigation, but digital forensic techniques can be of value in a wide variety of situations, including perhaps, simply re-tracking steps taken when data has been lost. 4. What are the common scenarios? Wide and varied! Examples include: - Employee internet abuse (common, but decreasing) - Unauthorized disclosure of corporate information and data (accidental and intentional) - Industrial espionage - Damage assessment (following an incident) - Criminal fraud and deception cases - More general criminal cases (many criminals simply store information on computers, intentionally or unwittingly) - and countless others! 5. How is a computer forensic investigation approached? It's a detailed science. However, very broadly, the main phases are sometimes considered to be: secure the subject system (from tampering during the operation); take a copy of hard drive (if applicable); identify and recovery all files (including those deleted); access/copy hidden, protected and temporary files; study 'special' areas on the drive (eg: residue from previously deleted files); investigate data/settings from installed applications/programs; assess the system as a whole, including its structure; consider general factors relating to the users activity; create detailed report. Throughout the investigation, it is important to stress that a full audit log of your activities should be maintained. 6. Is there anything that should NOT be done during an investigation? Definitely. However, these tend to be related to the nature of the computer system being investigated. Typically though, it is important to avoid changing date/time stamps (of files for example) or changing data itself. The same applies to the overwriting of unallocated space (which can happen on re-boot for example). 'Study don't change' is a useful catch-phrase. 7. I am interested in a career in this field. Where do I start? This is a common question, with many answers. Perhaps a good starting point however is to read the specific section of our Forum: "Digital Forensics: Getting Started". This includes hundreds of posts on this issue. 8. What about training? Again, there is a specific area of the Forum dedicated to education and training. In addition, we are currently building an entire section comprising first party reviews of formal courses (see left hand panel). Finally, although designed largely for practitioners, the Computer Forensics Toolkit is increasingly being used as a training resource (see top right).

Posted by Monica on Thursday, August 26 @ 13:28:04 EDT (35839 reads) (Read More... | Score: 4.00)