Forensic Science and Technology Commons^™

Aacsb‐Accredited Schools’ Adoption Of Information Security Curriculum, Linda Lau, Cheryl Davis

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The need to professionally and successfully conduct computer forensic investigations of incidents has never been greater. This has launched an increasing demand for a skilled computer security workforce (Locasto, et al., 2011). This paper examines the extent to which AACSB-accredited universities located in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. are working towards providing courses that will meet this demand. The authors conduct an online research of the information security courses and programs offered by the 27 AACSB-accredited business schools in the selected area.

The preliminary investigation revealed that eight of the 27 participating universities did not offer any courses in cybersecurity, …

Digital Forensics Investigation In A Collegiate Environment, Robert E. Johnston

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Creating, building, managing a cost effective digital forensics lab including a team of qualified examiners can be a challenge for colleges [1] with multiple campuses in multiple towns, counties and states. Leaving such examination responsibilities to each of the campuses results in not only disparity in the results but more than likely excessive duplication of efforts as well as the potential for compromise of evidence. Centralizing the forensic efforts results in a team that is not subject to the political pressures of a campus and virtually eliminates the possibility of examiner favoritism. Learn what it takes to create a cost …

Backtrack In The Outback - A Preliminary Report On Cyber Security Evaluation Of Organisations In Western Australia, Craig Valli, Andrew Woodward, Peter Hannay

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The authors were involved in extensive vulnerability assessment and penetration testing of over 15 large organisations across various industry sectors in the Perth CBD. The actual live testing involved a team of five people for approximately a four week period, and was black box testing. The scanning consisted of running network and web vulnerability tools, and in a few cases, exploiting vulnerability to establish validity of the tools. The tools were run in aggressive mode with no attempt made to deceive or avoid detection by IDS/IPS or firewalls. The aim of the testing was to determine firstly whether these organisations …

Creating Realistic Corpora For Security And Forensic Education, Kam Woods, Christopher A. Lee, Simson Garfinkel, David Dittrich, Adam Russell, Kris Kearton

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

We present work on the design, implementation, distribution, and use of realistic forensic datasets to support digital forensics and security education. We describe in particular the “M57-Patents” scenario, a multi-modal corpus consisting of hard drive images, RAM images, network captures, and images from other devices typically found in forensics investigations such as USB drives and cellphones. Corpus creation has been performed as part of a scripted scenario; subsequently it is less “noisy” than real-world data but retains the complexity necessary to support a wide variety of forensic education activities. Realistic forensic corpora allow direct comparison of approaches and tools across …

Developing A Forensic Continuous Audit Model, Grover S. Kearns, Katherine J. Barker

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Despite increased attention to internal controls and risk assessment, traditional audit approaches do not seem to be highly effective in uncovering the majority of frauds. Less than 20 percent of all occupational frauds are uncovered by auditors. Forensic accounting has recognized the need for automated approaches to fraud analysis yet research has not examined the benefits of forensic continuous auditing as a method to detect and deter corporate fraud. The purpose of this paper is to show how such an approach is possible. A model is presented that supports the acceptance of forensic continuous auditing by auditors and management as …

Development Of A Distributed Print‐Out Monitoring System For Efficient Forensic Investigation, Satoshi Kai, Tetsutaro Uehara

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

If information leakage occurs, an investigator is instructed to specify what documents were leaked and who leaked them. In the present work, a distributed print-out monitoring system—which consists of a virtual printer driver and print-out policy/log management servers—was developed. For easily matching the discovered (i.e., leaked) paper document with the print-out log, the virtual printer driver acquires full-text of printed-out documents by DDI hooking technique to check the content, transforms a spool file to a picture file and creates both a thumbnail and text log for forensic investigation afterwards. The log size is as only about 0.04 times bigger than …

Mac Os X Forensics: Password Discovery, David Primeaux, Robert Dahlberg, Kamnab Keo, Stephen Larson, B. Pennell, K. Sherman

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

OS X provides a password-rich environment in which passwords protect OS X resources and perhaps many other resources accessed through OS X. Every password an investigator discovers in an OS X environment has the potential for use in discovering other such passwords, and any discovered passwords may also be useful in other aspects of an investigation, not directly related to the OS X environment. This research advises the use of multiple attack vectors in approaching the password problem in an OS X system, including the more generally applicable non-OS X-specific techniques such as social engineering or well-known password cracking techniques …

Software Piracy Forensics: Impact And Implications Of Post‐Piracy Modifications, Vinod Bhattathiripad, S. Santhosh Baboo

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Piracy is potentially possible at any stage of the lifetime of the software. In a post-piracy situation, however, the growth of the respective versions of the software (both the original and pirated) is expected to be in different directions as a result of expectedly different implementation strategies. This paper shows how such post-piracy modifications are of special interest to a cyber crime expert investigating software piracy and suggests that the present software piracy forensic (or software copyright infringement investigation) approaches require amendments to take in such modifications. For this purpose, the paper also presents a format that is jargon-free, so …

Understanding Issues In Cloud Forensics: Two Hypothetical Case Studies, Josiah Dykstra, Alan T. Sherman

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The inevitable vulnerabilities and criminal targeting of cloud environments demand an understanding of how digital forensic investigations of the cloud can be accomplished. We present two hypothetical case studies of cloud crimes; child pornography being hosted in the cloud, and a compromised cloudbased website. Our cases highlight shortcomings of current forensic practices and laws. We describe significant challenges with cloud forensics, including forensic acquisition, evidence preservation and chain of custody, and open problems for continued research.

Keywords: Cloud computing, cloud forensics, digital forensics, case studies

A Practitioners Guide To The Forensic Investigation Of Xbox 360 Gaming Consoles, Ashley L. Podhradsky, Rob D’Ovidio, Cindy Casey

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Given the ubiquitous nature of computing, individuals now have nearly 24-7 access to the internet. People are not just going online through traditional means with a PC anymore, they are now frequently using nontraditional devices such as cell phones, smart phones, and gaming consoles. Given the increased use of gaming consoles for online access, there is also an increased use of gaming consoles to commit criminal activity. The digital forensic community has been tasked with creating new approaches for forensically analyzing gaming consoles. In this research paper the authors demonstrate different tools, both commercial and open source, available to forensically …

Sampling: Making Electronic Discovery More Cost Effective, Milton Luoma, Vicki Luoma

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

With the huge volumes of electronic data subject to discovery in virtually every instance of litigation, time and costs of conducting discovery have become exceedingly important when litigants plan their discovery strategies. Rather than incurring the costs of having lawyers review every document produced in response to a discovery request in search of relevant evidence, a cost effective strategy for document review planning is to use statistical sampling of the database of documents to determine the likelihood of finding relevant evidence by reviewing additional documents. This paper reviews and discusses how sampling can be used to make document review more …

Digital Forensics And The Law, Karon N. Murff, Hugh E. Gardenier, Martha L. Gardenier

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

As computers and digital devices become more entrenched in our way of life, they become tools for both good and nefarious purposes. When the digital world collides with the legal world, a vast chasm is created. This paper will reflect how the legal community is failing to meet its obligation to provide adequate representation due to a lack of education about digital (computer) forensics. Whether in a civil litigation setting or a criminal setting, attorneys, prosecutors and judges have inadequate knowledge when it comes to the important questions they need to ask regarding digital evidence. Reliance on expert witnesses is …

Defining Success: Examining What It Means To Be Good In Forensics, David J. Brennan

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

For decades college students have been competing in forensic activity (forensics), spending countless hours researching, writing, and performing speeches. Forensic scholars have never created an overarching definition of what it means to be successful in forensics. A survey was created and sent out on the individual events listserv, asking competitors and coaches to define success. Analysis reveals both competitors and coaches believe success in forensics is a combination of competitive achievement, building communication skills, and personal growth.

The Implications Of Virtual Environments In Digital Forensic Investigations, Farrah M. Patterson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research paper discusses the role of virtual environments in digital forensic investigations. With virtual environments becoming more prevalent as an analysis tool in digital forensic investigations, it’s becoming more important for digital forensic investigators to understand the limitation and strengths of virtual machines. The study aims to expose limitations within commercial closed source virtual machines and open source virtual machines. The study provides a brief overview of history digital forensic investigations and virtual environments, and concludes with an experiment with four common open and closed source virtual machines; the effects of the virtual machines on the host machine as …

Survey On Cloud Forensics And Critical Criteria For Cloud Forensic Capability: A Preliminary Analysis, Keyun Ruan, Ibrahim Baggili, Joe Carthy, Tahar Kechadi

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

In this paper we present the current results and analysis of the survey “Cloud forensics and critical criteria for cloud forensic capability” carried out towards digital forensic experts and practitioners. This survey was created in order to gain a better understanding on some of the key questions of the new field - cloud forensics - before further research and development. We aim to understand concepts such as its definition, the most challenging issues, most valuable research directions, and the critical criteria for cloud forensic capability.

Cat Detect (Computer Activity Timeline Detection): A Tool For Detecting Inconsistency In Computer Activity Timelines, Andrew Marrington, Ibrahim Baggili, George Mohay, Andrew Clark

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

The construction of timelines of computer activity is a part of many digital investigations. These timelines of events are composed of traces of historical activity drawn from system logs and potentially from evidence of events found in the computer file system. A potential problem with the use of such information is that some of it may be inconsistent and contradictory thus compromising its value. This work introduces a software tool (CAT Detect) for the detection of inconsistency within timelines of computer activity. We examine the impact of deliberate tampering through experiments conducted with our prototype software tool. Based on the …

Program And Proceedings: Nebraska Academy Of Sciences 1880–2011, 131st Anniversary Year, One Hundred-Twenty-First Annual Meeting

Nebraska Academy of Sciences: Programs and Proceedings

Program

Aeronautics and Space Science

Collegiate Academy: Biology

Collegiate Academy: Chemistry and Physics

Chemistry and Physics

Biological and Medical Sciences

Junior Academy, Senior High Competition

Nebraska Wesleyan University Health and Sciences Graduate School Fair, Olin and Smith Curtiss Halls

Teaching of Science and Math

Aeronautics and Space Science, Poster Session

Applied Science and Technology

Maiben Memorial Lecture: Erin Flynn, Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo

Aeronautics

Anthropology

Earth Science

Junior Academy, Junior High Competition

The Application Of Chemometrics To The Detection And Classification Of Ignitable Liquids In Fire Debris Using The Total Ion Spectrum, Jennifer N. Lewis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Current methods in ignitable liquid identification and classification from fire debris rely on pattern recognition of ignitable liquids in total ion chromatograms, extracted ion profiles, and target compound comparisons, as described in American Standards for Testing and Materials E1618-10. The total ion spectra method takes advantage of the reproducibility among sample spectra from the same American Society for Testing and Materials class. It is a method that is independent of the chromatographic conditions that affect retention times of target compounds, thus aiding in the use of computer-based library searching techniques. The total ion spectrum was obtained by summing the ion …

Column: Putting The Science In Digital Forensics, Fred Cohen

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

In a recent study, digital forensics was found to lack a consensus around even the most basis notions and terminology of the field. To quote: “These two preliminary studies individually suggest that (1) scientific consensus in the area of digital forensic evidence examination is lacking in the broad sense, but that different groups within that overall community may have limited consensus around areas in which they have special expertise, and (2) that the current peerreviewed publication process is not acting to bring about the sorts of elements typically found in the advancement of a science toward such a consensus. ... …

Extraction Of Electronic Evidence From Voip: Forensic Analysis Of A Virtual Hard Disk Vs Ram, David Irwin, Jill Slay, Arek Dadej, Malcolm Shore

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The popularity of Voice over the Internet Protocol (VoIP) is increasing as the cost savings and ease of use is realised by a wide range of home and corporate users. However, the technology is also attractive to criminals. This is because VoIP is a global telephony service, in which it is difficult to verify the user’s identification. The security of placing such calls may also be appealing to criminals, as many implementations use strong encryption to secure both the voice payload as well as to control messages making monitoring such VoIP calls difficult since conventional methods such as wire-tapping is …