Forensic Science and Technology Commons^™

Understanding Cybercrime Offending And Victimization Patterns From A Global Perspective, Jin R. Lee

International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime

Cybercrime research within criminology and criminal justice sciences has increased over the past few decades, improving the knowledge and evidence-base around cybercrime offending and victimization generally. While earlier cybercrime studies were based primarily in the United States, there has been a recent surge in studies using international samples and multidisciplinary approaches to understand cybercrime patterns. The current issue of the International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence and Cybercrime consists of four articles that seek to advance our understanding of cybercrime behaviors from a global perspective. To that end, the objective of this paper is to provide a brief overview of the …

The Relationship Between Parenting Practices And Cyberbullying Perpetration: The Mediating Role Of Moral Beliefs, Jaeyong Choi, Seungmug (Zech) Lee, Layne Dittmann

International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime

Criminologists and psychologists have long recognized that parenting practices can affect childhood outcomes and the development of moral beliefs in children. Another body of literature provides evidence that morality is a key cause of antisocial behavior. Yet, a noticeable gap in this line of work has been testing the mediation effects of parenting practices on cyberbullying via moral beliefs. Using a sample of South Korean adolescents, we tested whether moral beliefs mediate the relationships between parenting practices and cyberbullying perpetration. Results show that parental supervision and excessive parenting can influence cyberbullying perpetration and that the impact of parenting practices is …

Social Construction Of Internet Fraud As Innovation Among Youths In Nigeria, Austin Ayodele Mr., Jonathan Kehinde Oyedeji, Huthman Olamide Badmos

International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime

The proliferation of internet technologies has shaped interactions in contemporary society. Despite the pivotal importance of the internet to the global economy, it has several negative consequences such as internet fraud. This study examined the perception that young adults in Nigeria hold about internet fraud as an innovative means to economic survival rather than as a criminal enterprise. Robert Merton’s Anomie/Strain Theory (AST) was adopted as the theoretical thrust of the study. Adopting a qualitative data collection method, 15 participants were selected using the non-probabilistic purposive and snowballing techniques while opinions were sampled through in-depth interviews in different locations within …

Cybersecurity Risk In U.S. Critical Infrastructure: An Analysis Of Publicly Available U.S. Government Alerts And Advisories, Zachary Lanz

International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime

As threat actor operations become increasingly sophisticated and emphasize the targeting of critical infrastructure and services, the need for cybersecurity information sharing will continue to grow. Escalating demand for cyber threat intelligence and information sharing across the cybersecurity community has resulted in the need to better understand the information produced by reputable sources such as U.S. CISA Alerts and ICS-CERT advisories. The text analysis program, Profiler Plus, is used to extract information from 1,574 U.S. government alerts and advisories to develop visualizations and generate enhanced insights into different cyber threat actor types, the tactics which can be used for cyber …

Scientific Development Of An Integrated Workflow For Latent Print, Questioned Document, And Dna Processing Of Paper Evidence, Ashley Morgan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Touch paper evidence could be the source of probative human DNA but recovery is challenging and forensic laboratories instead prioritize processing by the Latent Print and Questioned Document disciplines. Recent advances in DNA collection methods and the increased sensitivity of STR typing kits have improved success rates for DNA testing of paper evidence; but prior to implementing DNA collection, laboratories have to decide in which order to examine paper for the different types of forensic evidence. This thesis developed and tested a multi-discipline workflow for processing paper evidence by DNA, Latent Prints and Questioned Documents experts. Preliminary sampling studies indicated …

Firearms And Toolmark Error Rates, Susan Vanderplas, Kori Khan, Heike Hofmann, Alicia L. Carriquiry

Department of Statistics: Faculty Publications

We have outlined several problems with the state of error rate studies on firearm and toolmark examination. Fundamentally, we do not know what the error rate is for these types of comparisons. This is a failure of the scientific study of toolmarks, rather than the examiners themselves, but until this is corrected with multiple studies that meet the criteria described in Section 3, we cannot support the use of this evidence in criminal proceedings.

Cognitive And Other Types Of Biases Affecting Forensic Evidence: Research Analysis And Expert Conclusions, Sukhmanpreet Kaur

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

This paper identifies the issue of cognitive bias, with emphasis on confirmation bias, and its implications within the forensic science field. Biased thinking or processing of forensic evidence can have significant effects on an investigation process. The literature analyzed discusses the consequences of providing contextual or irrelevant ancillary information to forensic experts. Following this discussion, the opinions held by forensic professionals with regards to confirmation bias and erroneous conclusions will likewise be evaluated. It is important that the forensic science field continues to listen to its experts in order to develop solutions for dealing with and preventing instances of confirmation …

Digital Forensic Investigation, Dejuan Green

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Finding, acquiring, processing, analyzing, and reporting data on electronically stored data is the main goal of the forensic science discipline known as "digital forensics." Nearly all illegal acts include the use of electronic evidence, making digital forensics support essential for law enforcement investigations. Furthermore, digital forensics is very important to cases aiding in many cases and can lead to saving lives/ victims and locking up criminals. A wide range of devices, including laptops, cellphones, remote storage, unmanned aerial systems, shipborne equipment, and more, can be used to gather electronic evidence. [2] Digital forensics' major objective is to take data from …

Complex Dna Mixture Deconvolution By Single Cell Genomics: Direct Physical Cell Subsampling And High Sensitivity Dna Typing, Kaitlin Huffman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Biological evidence is often found at crime scenes and can comprise of DNA from the victim(s) and perpetrator(s) to a crime as well as from individuals with no direct relationship to the incident. This can complicate analysis as DNA mixtures are one of the more difficult sources of biological evidence to interpret. Probabilistic genotyping (PG) has greatly aided in mixture analysis. However, even with PG, standard bulk mixture approaches do not always result in probative results as allele overlap, artifacts, or low-level minor contributors inevitably cause genotype information loss. Therefore, deconvolution of forensic DNA mixtures into their individual component DNA …

Forensic Science In Legal Education, Brandon L. Garrett, Glinda S. Cooper, Quinn Beckham

Faculty Scholarship

In criminal cases, forensic science reports and expert testimony play an increasingly important role in adjudication. More states now follow a federal reliability standard, following Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals and Rule 702, which calls upon judges to assess the reliability and validity of such scientific evidence. Little is known about what education law schools provide regarding forensic and scientific evidence or what types of specialized training they receive on scientific methods or evidence. Whether law schools have added forensic science courses to their curricula in recent years was not known. To better understand the answers to those questions, in …

Timestamp Estimation From Outdoor Scenes, Tawfiq Salem, Jisoo Hwang, Rafael Padilha

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The increasing availability of smartphones allowed people to easily capture and share images on the internet. These images are often associated with metadata, including the image capture time (timestamp) and the location where the image was captured (geolocation). The metadata associated with images provides valuable information to better understand scenes and events presented in these images. The timestamp can be manipulated intentionally to provide false information to convey a twisted version of reality. Images with manipulated timestamps are often used as a cover-up for wrongdoing or broadcasting false claims and competing views on the internet. Estimating the time of capture …

Anatomy Of An Internet Hijack And Interception Attack: A Global And Educational Perspective, Ben A. Scott, Michael N. Johnstone, Patryk Szewczyk

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The Internet’s underlying vulnerable protocol infrastructure is a rich target for cyber crime, cyber espionage and cyber warfare operations. The stability and security of the Internet infrastructure are important to the function of global matters of state, critical infrastructure, global e-commerce and election systems. There are global approaches to tackle Internet security challenges that include governance, law, educational and technical perspectives. This paper reviews a number of approaches to these challenges, the increasingly surgical attacks that target the underlying vulnerable protocol infrastructure of the Internet, and the extant cyber security education curricula; we find the majority of predominant cyber security …

Spectrally-Based Color Calibration Of Microscopes For Birefringence Analysis, Olivia Feild

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The analysis of colors is omnipresent in forensics. While their use for macroscopic evidence such as soil sees a large amount of research, their correct handling is more challenging when observed under a microscope. Either for hairs or textile fibers, their color (from melanin, dyes or for birefringence analysis) is crucial in being able to compare between fibers found at a crime scene. Typically, color is quantified using a color space, such as RGB, XYZ, L*a*b*, and L*u*v*. Unfortunately, color is very subjective and often difficult to quantify accurately, even using digital detectors. Finding true matches of colors has been …

Reticular Design And Synthesis Of Metal-Organic Frameworks With Targeted Emergent Properties, David Fairchild

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The research presented in this dissertation describes the design and synthesis of substitutional-solid-solution-based multivariate metal-organic frameworks (SSS-based MTV MOFs) with functionalized organic linkers to study their emergent properties in the crystalline solid state. The synthetic versatility and tunability of organic chemistry coupled with the predictable organization of inorganic structures enables MTV MOF systems to further the fundamental understanding of structure-composition-property relationships for the targeted design of applied materials due to their ability to control the structure, composition, and property independently. To begin, a set of terphenyl linkers with varied steric and electronic properties were crystallized as a family of UiO-type …

Analysis And Characterization Of Smokeless Powders And Smokeless Powder Residues, Emily Lennert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The ability to associate a smokeless powder, smokeless powder residue, or organic gunshot residue (OGSR) to one another may be helpful in determining the origin of a suspected sample and aid in linking a suspect to a crime scene. In this study, smokeless powders were extracted and analyzed via gas chromatography – mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and direct analysis in real time – high resolution mass spectrometry (DART-HRMS). Subsequently, group definition was performed using hierarchical cluster analysis and principal component analysis followed by internally validated classification models. Then, smokeless powder residues were generated in-lab and extracted. Resulting residue data from each …

Anatomical Diagrams And Dolls: Guidelines For Their Usage In Forensic Interviews And Courts Of Law, Victor Vieth

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Deepfakes, Shallowfakes, And The Need For A Private Right Of Action, Eric Kocsis

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

For nearly as long as there have been photographs and videos, people have been editing and manipulating them to make them appear to be something they are not. Usually edited or manipulated photographs are relatively easy to detect, but those days are numbered. Technology has no morality; as it advances, so do the ways it can be misused. The lack of morality is no clearer than with deepfake technology.

People create deepfakes by inputting data sets, most often pictures or videos into a computer. A series of neural networks attempt to mimic the original data set until they are nearly …

A Lightweight Reliably Quantified Deepfake Detection Approach, Tianyi Wang, Kam Pui Chow

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Deepfake has brought huge threats to society such that everyone can become a potential victim. Current Deepfake detection approaches have unsatisfactory performance in either accuracy or efficiency. Meanwhile, most models are only evaluated on different benchmark test datasets with different accuracies, which could not imitate the real-life Deepfake unknown population. As Deepfake cases have already been raised and brought challenges at the court, it is disappointed that no existing work has studied the model reliability and attempted to make the detection model act as the evidence at the court. We propose a lightweight Deepfake detection deep learning approach using the …

Leveraging Maching Learning In Financial Fraud Forensics In The Age Of Cybersecurity, Md. Ariful Haque, Sachin Shetty

VMASC Publications

Financial sectors are lucrative cyber-attack targets because of their immediate financial gain. As a result, financial institutions face challenges in developing systems that can automatically identify security breaches and separate fraudulent transactions from legitimate transactions. Today, organizations widely use machine learning techniques to identify any fraudulent behavior in customers' transactions. However, machine learning techniques are often challenging because of financial institutions' confidentiality policy, leading to not sharing the customer transaction data. This chapter discusses some crucial challenges of handling cybersecurity and fraud in the financial industry and building machine learning-based models to address those challenges. The authors utilize an open-source …

Pain That Only She Must Bear: On The Invisibility Of Women In Judicial Abortion Rhetoric, Francesca Laguardia

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The graphic and bodily facts of a legal question of rights are relevant to the courts, particularly in questions that directly implicate physical bodies and pain, such as right to die cases, or what level of search may be allowable and when. However, in the case of abortion, or more specifically the bodily ramifications of pregnancy and childbirth, this detail is conspicuously absent. This article, relying on a content analysis of over 220 legal opinions on abortion rights, documents this absence of rhetoric. Particularly in the context of other discussions of pain and physical health risks in these very same …

Core Point Pixel-Level Localization By Fingerprint Features In Spatial Domain, Xueyi Ye, Yuzhong Shen, Maosheng Zeng, Yirui Liu, Huahua Chen, Zhijing Zhao

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Faculty Publications

Singular point detection is a primary step in fingerprint recognition, especially for fingerprint alignment and classification. But in present there are still some problems and challenges such as more false-positive singular points or inaccurate reference point localization. This paper proposes an accurate core point localization method based on spatial domain features of fingerprint images from a completely different viewpoint to improve the fingerprint core point displacement problem of singular point detection. The method first defines new fingerprint features, called furcation and confluence, to represent specific ridge/valley distribution in a core point area, and uses them to extract the innermost Curve …

Identification Of The New Synthetic Opioid Bucinnazine And Its Metabolites Using Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry (Lc-Ms/Ms), Karissa N. Resnik

Master of Science in Forensic Science Directed Research Projects

In the past 20 years, the rate of opioid use increased drastically in the United States. The country has experienced an enormous number of deaths caused by opioid overdose, opioid use disorder (OUD), as well as other harms as a consequence of the high numbers of opioid prescriptions. Fentanyl, a well-known synthetic opioid, has been a contributor to the opioid crisis since 2013 due to its popularity in clinical and illicit use. It has a high potency, which makes it an effective analgesic but a dangerous illicit substance. A new synthetic opioid, bucinnazine, has recently become a new black-market opioid …

The Analysis Of Commercially Available Kratom Products In Richmond, Virginia, James H. Fleming Jr

Master of Science in Forensic Science Directed Research Projects

Kratom is a novel psychoactive substance that has gained popularity within the past ten years. Originating from Southeast Asia, the leaves of the Mitragyna speciosa tree contain two principal alkaloids, mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine, that play a key role in opioid-like effects. Twenty-nine kratom products were obtained from tobacco shops in the Richmond, Virginia area, including powders, teas, capsules, extracts, and a carbonated beverage. Samples were analyzed using Direct Analysis in Real Time-Mass Spectrometry (DART-MS) for kratom alkaloids, labeled ingredients, and other possible organic compounds. Inductively Coupled Plasma-Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES) was used to quantitate aluminum, arsenic, copper, iron, magnesium, nickel, …

Using A Non-Destructive Method To Estimate The Number Of Contributors And Predict Dna Yield In Touch Dna Mixtures, Christin Lee

Master of Science in Forensic Science Directed Research Projects

Touch DNA samples are low templates and often are mixtures, making them typically one of the most difficult types of evidence to interpret. Short tandem repeat analysis is a standard method to estimate the number of contributors and DNA yield for each contributor; however, there are some limitations. Applying a non-destructive pre-DNA analysis technique that provides information about the touch DNA may improve the casework process. Antibody probes to hormones such as testosterone and dihydrotestosterone (DHT), and proteins including cytokeratins (CK) inside epidermal cells, have been demonstrated to produce a personalized signature for human touch cell populations. Testosterone, DHT, and …

A Comparison Of Cyanoacrylate Fuming Followed By Mbd Dye Staining And Gun Bluing For Development Of Latent Fingerprints On Cartridge Cases, Jamie Zaleta

Master of Science in Forensic Science Directed Research Projects

The development of latent fingerprints on cartridge cases is a desirable ability for the forensic laboratory, offering the potential to provide probative evidence as to the handler of whole ammunition or fired cartridge cases discovered at the crime scene. Previous studies have focused primarily on intentionally-laid fingerprints on cartridge case surfaces, which do not represent samples likely to come across the desk of a forensic analyst. This study focuses on naturally-handled ammunition and the success rates associated with latent fingerprints produced in a more realistic set of circumstances. A comparison was performed of two fingerprint development methods—gun bluing and MBD …

Development Of A Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification (Lamp) Assay For Detection Of Mirnas, Alisha B. Whelan

Master of Science in Forensic Science Directed Research Projects

Body fluid identification serves a vital role in contextualizing biological evidence received in forensic laboratories. While several fluids can be presumptively detected using immunological or catalytic tests, these tests are susceptible to false results and have limited sensitivity. True confirmatory testing is still somewhat limited in forensic laboratories. With the advancement of DNA typing technologies, laboratories can develop DNA profiles from trace amounts of sample, increasing the demand for sensitive and accurate body fluid detection. This project proposes using loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) as a method to rapidly detect microRNAs (miRNAs) that are differentially expressed in various body fluids with …

Optimization And Comparison Of Methods For Separation Of Spermatozoa From Superabsorbent Polymer-Containing Forensic Evidence, Hannah Wells

Master of Science in Forensic Science Directed Research Projects

Sexual assault is currently one of the most prevalent crimes that affects victims of all ages. Forensic DNA analysts often confirm proof of contact in sexual assault cases through the identification of spermatozoa and subsequent STR profiling. Diapers and other feminine hygiene products, such as maxi pads and ultrathin pads, are types of superabsorbent polymer-containing evidence that complicate the process of DNA analysis due to the trapping of the spermatozoa in the gel-like matrix. In this study, a comparison of methods was performed to determine which extraction technique produces the highest sperm cell and DNA yield and generates a usable …

Stability And Variation Within Donors Of Mirna Markers For Body Fluid Identification, Kelsey R. Price

Master of Science in Forensic Science Directed Research Projects

Traditional enzymatic tests for body fluid identification are prone to false negatives, false positives, and several body fluids do not have confirmatory or reliable presumptive tests. Therefore, molecular-based tests may be more reliable, such as messenger RNA (mRNA), microbial DNA, or microRNA (miRNA) assays.

miRNAs are small, noncoding RNAs whose main function in-vivo is the regulation of protein expression by selectively suppressing the translation of their corresponding mRNAs. They also lack a poly-A tail, and because of this, their small size, and their association with other molecules such as the RISC protein complex, they are more robust than other RNAs, …

Optimization Of A Microfluidic Device For Cell Capture Using Optical Trapping, Samantha C. Pagel

Master of Science in Forensic Science Directed Research Projects

Biological mixtures which result from evidence produced in sexual assault cases are one of the most common types of mixtures observed in forensic biology casework and have contributed to evidence backlogs across the country. In the forensic community, this has highlighted the need for a more efficient cell separation method at the beginning of the DNA analysis workflow than the currently accepted method. One promising novel front-end cell separation technique is optical trapping. In heterogeneous mixtures, optical tweezers have been demonstrated to manipulate and isolate cells of interest from other cell types.

For this research, a range of 5 to …

Impact Of 1,4-Dithiothreitol (Dtt) On Microbial Community Structures Associated With Human Semen Samples, Christian R. Blaise

Master of Science in Forensic Science Directed Research Projects

Body fluid identification (BFID) is one of the most important steps in forensic science as it provides important context to how DNA analysis should be performed on biological samples found at the scene of a crime. Many scientific methods on BFID have been developed over the years with respective benefits and flaws. One emerging method in recent years is microbial signature based BFID. This method uses the same DNA extract that is utilized for human DNA profile generation for microbial analysis. Although DNA is extracted from all body fluid samples without any additional steps, extraction of human DNA from semen …