Legal Studies Commons^™

This paper provides a historical overview of the development of cyberforensics as a scientific discipline, along with a description of the current state of training, educational programs, certification and accreditation. The paper traces the origins of cyberforensics, the acceptance of cyberforensics as a forensic science and its recognition as a component of information security. It also discusses the development of professional certification and standardized bodies of knowledge that have had a substantial impact on the discipline. Finally, it discusses the accreditation of cyberforensic educational programs, its linkage with the bodies of knowledge and its effect on cyberforensic educational programs.

The Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a powerful gaming console that supports Internet-related activities, local file storage and the playing of Blu-ray movies. The PS3 also allows users to partition and install a secondary operating system on the hard drive. This “desktop-like” functionality along with the encryption of the primary hard drive containing the gaming software raises significant issues related to the forensic analysis of PS3 systems. This paper discusses the PS3 architecture and behavior, and provides recommendations for conducting forensic investigations of PS3 systems.

As virtualization becomes more prevalent in the enterprise and in personal computing, there is a great need to understand the technology as well as its ramifications for recovering digital evidence. This paper focuses on trace evidence related to the installation and execution of virtual machines (VMs) on a host machine. It provides useful information regarding the types and locations of files installed by VM applications, the processes created by running VMs and the structure and identity of VMs, ancillary files and associated artifacts

This paper describes procedures for conducting forensic examinations of Apple Macs running Mac OS X. The target disk mode is used to create a forensic duplicate of a Mac hard drive and preview it. Procedures are discussed for recovering evidence from allocated space, unallocated space, slack space and virtual memory. Furthermore, procedures are described for recovering trace evidence from Mac OS X default email, web browser and instant messaging applications, as well as evidence pertaining to commands executed from a terminal.

Secure deletion programs purport to permanently erase files from digital media. These programs are used by businesses and individuals to remove sensitive information from media, and by criminals to remove evidence of the tools or fruits of illegal activities. This paper focuses on the trace evidence left by secure deletion programs. In particular, five Windows-based secure deletion programs are tested to determine if they leave identifiable signatures after deleting a file. The results show that the majority of the programs leave identifiable signatures. Moreover, some of the programs do not completely erase file metadata, which enables forensic investigators to extract …