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Computer Forensics Dissertation PDF

The document discusses the challenges of writing a dissertation in computer forensics and offers the services of HelpWriting.net to assist students with their dissertations. It notes that computer forensics dissertations require both an understanding of the subject matter as well as technical details. The process can be time-consuming and mentally taxing for students. However, HelpWriting.net has experienced writers who can help students at every stage of the dissertation process from research to writing.
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100% found this document useful (2 votes)
59 views

Computer Forensics Dissertation PDF

The document discusses the challenges of writing a dissertation in computer forensics and offers the services of HelpWriting.net to assist students with their dissertations. It notes that computer forensics dissertations require both an understanding of the subject matter as well as technical details. The process can be time-consuming and mentally taxing for students. However, HelpWriting.net has experienced writers who can help students at every stage of the dissertation process from research to writing.
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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For example, the sample script in this section is for a Macintosh running OS 8.2 on an 8 GB SCSI
drive. All JPEG files, including EXIF, start from offset 0 (the first byte of a file) with hexadecimal
FFD8. You ’ re responsi ble for loc ating the pro - grams for these des ign plans so that attorneys and
expe rt witnesse s can view the evidence files. Router logs can be used to verify what types of e-mail
data? a. List three pieces of information found in metadata in the Linux file system. 11. How do
inodes keep track of a file ’ s name and data? 12. The suspe cted arson ist has alre ady been arrested,
but the insuran ce company wa nts to determin e whether the re ’ s any contrib utory neglig ence on
the par t of the victims. Two fil es were extra cted to your work folder for th is project. Newer
Windows forensics tools can produce electronic reports in a variety of formats, such as word
processing documents, HTML Web pages, or Acrobat PDF files. Info2 file In Windows NT through
Vista, the control file for the Recycle Bin. If you use all uppercase char- acters in a batch file, for
example, you must type uppercase letters when you enter the parameters. Employee Termination
Cases The major ity of investig ative work for termin ation cases in volves employee abuse of corpo-
rate as sets. Simila rly, there ’ s extensive case law in which expe rts were not disquali fied and
allowed to testify ove r the objection of oppos ing counsel. They can also store other information,
such as mes- sages and call history. Ho wever, bec ause using Sa vePart on a large par tition can take
several hou rs, you examine you r hard drive and save a partition from a floppy disk. EFS Recovery
Key Agent The Recove ry Key Agent imp lemen ts the recovery cer tifica te, which is in the Win
dows admin istrator accoun t. Becaus e OS vendor s don ’ t always supply adeq uate informat ion
about fu ture file syste m upgrades, yo u must research and prepar e for these change s and develop
resour ces for findi ng new specific ations if the vendo r fails to provide the m. Label the columns
Item and Sector. 2. In Hex Workshop, click Disk, Open Drive from the menu. A co py of the MDB
is also writte n to the next-t o-last blo ck on the vol ume to sup port disk ut ility fun ctions. Placing
ev idence tape ove r drive bays, inse rtion slots for power supp ly cords and USB cable s, and any
other open ings ensure s the security of evide nce. Le arn in g ab out these tools is also important
because you ’ ll likel y run across legacy systems i n investigations. In add itio n, info rm atio n in
RAM is lost a fter you tu rn off a susp ect sy stem. Enter the starting cluster position in the Cluster
text box, and click Go. 2. Click this starting cluster position, hold the Shift key down, and press the
right arrow key until you reach the ending cluster position for the data run (see Figure 16-15). Now
th at you have m ade this Re gis try mod ific atio n, you sh ould see tw o desk top icon s name d Wri
te Pro tect US B ON.re g and Writ e Prot ect US B OFF. reg. W hen you nee d to set y our work - sta
tion so th at it writ e-blo cks (p reve nts writ es to USB d evice s), dou ble -cli ck the Writ e Prote ct
USB O N icon. In large banks with many bra nch offices, how ever, the amo unt reached hun dreds
of tho usands of dollar s. If you see a warning message about using live evidence, click Yes to
continue. 12. In the Evidence Information dialog box, click to select your time zone, and then click
OK to accept the default settings. This log is also han dy for re port ing er rors to Ac ce ssDa ta.
Creating a boot- able image from an ISO file is different from copying data or music files to a CD or
DVD, however. Start IrfanView. 2. Click File, Open from the menu. They have been tested with
care, but are not guaranteed for any particular intent beyond educational purposes. Th ere are rules to
determin e whether you can be disquali fied from work- ing on a case merely because you discus sed
general aspec ts of it. You can use the floppy di sk to boot a suspec t ’ s compute r without con
tamina ting evidenc e on the hard drive.
Later in this section, you learn how to make a forensics acquisition in Linux without mounting the
device. Next, info rm Collecting Evidence in Private-Sector Incident Scenes 159. Coll ecti ng com
pute rs and proc essi ng a crim ina l or inci dent sc ene must be do ne syst ema tica lly. This rule is fo
llow ed in m ore th an hal f the st ates. You c an use the M D5 funct ion in FT K Imag er to obt ain
th e digit al signa tu re of a file or an ent ire driv e. In Figur e 9-8, you can see a hidden partit ion in
Disk Man ager, which sh ows it as an unknow n partition. Computer forensic investigators might
look into an organization's financial records for evidence of computer forensics also can uncover
valuable metadata that can be important to an investigation. Tools such as ProDiscover, X-Ways
Forensics, FTK, EnCase, SMART, ILook, and others offer several ways to view data, including
logical drive structures, such as folders and files. Before ar riving at an incid ent or crime scene,
identify potent ial hazar ds to your safety as we ll as that of other exa miners. In ad diti on, th is cha
pte r disc usse s med ia and hard ware, su ch as CD s and DV Ds an d IDE, SCS I, and SAT A drive
s. An AMD dual-core processor, 3 GB RAM, and a 200 GB Western Digital hard drive. They have
sufficient practice on all modern techniques and technologies to recover erased, modified, hidden,
and encrypted data. A non- steganographic graphics file is the same siz e as an identical
steganographic graphics file, and they look the same when you examine t h e m i n a gr a ph i c s v i
e w in g u ti li t y, su c h as Ir f anV ie w. Click the message you want to copy. 5. Resize the Outlook
window so that you can see the message you want to copy and the USB drive icon in Windows
Explorer or the Computer window. 6. Drag the message from the Outlook window to the USB drive
icon in Windows Explorer or the Computer window. 7. Click File, Print from the Outlook menu to
open the Print dialog box. Som e computer progr ammers corrup ted this method by openi ng an
account for them- selves and writin g programs th at diverted all the fra ctional mo nies into the ir
accounts. By understanding and addressing legal issues, computer forensic experts can ensure the
integrity and admissibility of their investigations. In the next Add Evidence to Case dialog box, click
the Individual File option button, and then click Continue. 154 Chapter 5. A framework for
computer aided investigation of crime in developing countries. This informat ion might be in plain
view or out of sigh t in a drawer or trash can. GroupW ise has two ways of organizin g mailboxes on
the serve r that make recoveri ng data easy. Since the release of Wind ows 2000, this back- ward
compatibility is no longer available. Beca use lost time can cost compan ies million s of dol- lars, com
puter forensic s specialis ts are often used to inves tigate policy violat ions. True or False? 16. A
virtual cluster consists of what kind of clusters? 17. The investigat o r t h en copied the evidence to a
separate program, such as a word processor, to creat e a report. You use this timeframe to narrow the
set of data you ’ re searching, and because you ’ re looking for unauthorized Internet use, you focus
the search on temporary Internet files, Internet history, and e-mail communica- tion. You can then
save an image file directly to a remote net- work server ’ s drive or restore image files created on a
network drive or removable media to a new target drive for follow-up examination and analysis.
Becaus e of the large qua ntitie s of data a drive can contain, the attorney will wan t to know abou t
everything of interes t on the drives. Start FTK with the Run as administrator option (if you ’ re
using Vista), and click OK or Yes in any warning or message boxes. You can propose changes to
clarify or define information or to include substantive information the attorney might have omitted.
After reconfiguring the browser, you might have to exit and restart.
All report s to the client shoul d start by statin g this mission or go al, which is usu ally to fin d
informat ion on a specific subject, recover certa in import ant docu- ments, or re cover certain typ es
of files or files wi th specific dates and tim es. Part of what you have to del iver to the jury is a per
son they can tru st to help them fig- ure out somethin g that ’ s beyond their expe rtise. To use MS -
DOS to ols, yo u have to dupl icat e the ori gin al driv e to pe rfor m the a naly sis. Obtaining a
Detailed Description of the Location The more in formatio n you have abo ut the locatio n of a
computer crime, the more eff iciently you can gathe r evidence from a crime scene. Som e of the
work load fo r netwo rk adm inis trato rs inv olves n etwo rk fore nsic s. To avoid these cos ts, some
vend ors have built low-ema nating works tations in stead of TEMPEST fa cilities. To designate the
target location, list the drive number followed by a colon and the starting absolute sector number.
Not e that on line 035 B3530 near the bottom, th ere ’ s text dat a in the right pane. In the Add
Comment dialog box that opens, enter a description and click OK. You can build a timeli ne with to
ols such as FT K and Sleut h Kit. I t also collects data to main- ta in th e HFS a nd ma ni pul at es fi
le s, di rec to rie s, an d oth er i tem s. In MS-DOS 6.22, the sam e directo ry and filename co
nventio ns from FAT12 were car ried over to FAT16. These ste ps show how to use the Wri tePart co
mmand with a flo ppy disk, but ty pically, you use Wri tePart for a hard disk par tition. Now follo w
these steps for the partition mapping dat a on this OS X drive: 1. During public investigations, you
search for evidence to support criminal allegations. Clients request services from a server, and a
server processes requests from clients. Fo r a pub lic ent ity such as a po lic e depa rtmen t, bu sine ss
requ ire ment s can c hang e dras tical ly be cause b udget s are pla nne d a year or mo re in ad vanc
e. The first digit, 3, means that the next 3 bytes (after the number of clusters assigned) contain the
cluster address value; for the first data run, this value is the LCN. Criminal investigation because law
enforcement agencies have more resources at their disposal c. When the system is powered on, Ntldr
reads the Boot.ini file, which dis- plays a boot menu. In 19 97 Ap ple in tro - duc ed Mac OS 8 foll
owe d by Ma c OS 9 befo re mov ing on to OS X. For example, if the date and time string is 62 16
9B 68 0A 7C C9 01, place the cursor on the 62 value. 600 Chapter 16. If you ope n a JPEG file in a
graph ics program, for exa mple, and sav e it as a JPEG file wit h a different nam e, lossy compre
ssion is reapp lied automa tically, whi ch removes mor e bits of data and, the refore, reduce s image
quality. Hands-On Project 5-1 In the past few yea rs, there have bee n challenge s to and changes in
the way the Patrio t Act is applied and what infor mation ISP s must supply. If you need to look for
hidden or deleted XIF fil es, you must build you r own header searc h string. Having a vendor-
supplied worksta- tion has its advantages. Open a command prompt window, and navigate to the
Tools folder in your work folder. 2. Place your forensic boot floppy disk in the floppy drive. As the
computer starts, the screen us ually displays the key or keys, such as the Delete key, you press to
open the CMOS setup screen. However, it ’ s the attorney ’ s responsibility to have graphical exhibits
admitted into evidence. Yo u mig ht have used a g raph ics pr ogra m, suc h as Micr oso ft Pai nt, Ad
obe Ph otos hop, or Gnom e GIMP, to cr eat e or edi t an ima ge.
Th is feat ure sa ves mo re spac e on all dis ks usi ng NTFS. Many comput er foren sics progra ms
can searc h for charac ter string s (letters an d number s) and hexade cimal value s, such as A9 for the
copyright sy mbol or AE for the register ed trademar k symbol. This command uses lossless data
compression to reduce the size of the image file. It i ncludes the default path a nd envir onmen tal
vari ables, s uch as te mporary directories. Figur e 12-13 shows a typ ical log file fo r a WatchGuar d
Firebox II. For ensics tools mig ht have diffi culty with third - party com pression uti lities, such as
th e RAR format. Of course, even if your initial plan is sound, at times you ’ ll find that you need to
deviate from the plan and follow where the evidence leads you. In th is exa mple, the e -mail ’ s subj
ect li ne and bod y Figure 12-21 E-mail search results in FINALeMAIL Figure 12-22 Viewing
message contents in FINALeMAIL Using Specialized E-mail Forensics Tools 475. An AMD dual-
core processor, 3 GB RAM, and a 200 GB Western Digital hard drive. If you ’ re u sing th ese ta pes,
test yo ur dat a by cop yin g the con tent s from the tap e bac k to a disk dri ve. Continued use of the
site after the effective date of a posted revision evidences acceptance. Ne twork lo gs ca n be he lpfu
l in dete rmin ing wh at happ ened on a mac hin e and give clu es on wha t to search fo r. Most skille
d users would make sur e this anomaly doesn ’ t occur, howeve r. In addition, create a Work
\Chap05\Chapter work folder on your system. True or False? 12. When recovering a file with
ProDiscover, your first objective is to recover cluster values. Extracting and Decoding Smartphone
and Tablet Evidence with the UFED Series. Chapter 4, “ Data Acquis ition, ” expl ains how to pr
epare to acqu ire data fro m a suspect ’ s drive an d discuss es avail able command- line and GUI ac
quisition tools. After your at torney has comple ted this exami nation, he or she asks th e court to
accept you as an exper t on com- puter for ensics. Figure 10-7 Searching clusters in ProDiscover
Locating and Recovering Graphics Files 393. Pro fess ion al condu ct, dis cuss ed in mor e detail in
Ch apte rs 15 and 1 6, in clude s eth ics, moral s, an d stand ard s of beh avio r. Types of Computer
Forensics Certifications Seve ral or gani zati ons, both pu blic and pr ivat e, hav e deve loped c erti
fica tion pr ogr ams for com - put er fo rens ics exa min ers. Cre- ate a flow from the beginn ing of
the report to the end. After the kernel bec omes operat ional, the syste m is usually boo ted to single
-user mode, in which onl y one user can log on. You are owe d fair com- pensat ion for yo ur time and
work under the terms of th e fee agree ment. Typ i- cally, this misuse is referred to as “ employee vio
lation of company rules. ” Computin g abuse compl aints often center on e- mail and Internet mis use
by employee s but could involve other comput ing resource s, such as using com pany software to pr
oduce a product fo r personal profit. Figure 8-19 The Select a volume to analyze or add a new image
file dialog box Figure 8-20 Entering timeline options Examining UNIX and Linux Disk Structures
and Boot Processes 329. A number of org ani zatio ns ha ve cre ated g uid elin es for d evis ing yo ur
own pr oces ses a nd pr oced ures. Wri te a brief re port on ho w you sh ould pr ocee d, incl udi ng
what y ou shoul d do firs t in this situ at ion. What methods do steganography programs use to hide
data in graphics files? (Choose all that apply.) a. Insertion b. Substitution c. Masking d. Carving 19.
Some clues left on a drive that might indicate steganography include which of the following? a.
Microso ft OSs allocate disk spa ce for files by clusters.
A law enfo rceme nt offi cer ca n searc h for and seiz e crimi nal ev ide nce only wi th probable
cause. Rememb er that during a depos ition, opposi ng attorneys us e all the techniqu es available to
them at tri al, so keep the guidel ines for testi mony in mind wh en answerin g questions, and be
assertive in yo ur responses. M akin g any alt era tion in one of th e file s — even changing one l
etter from uppe rcase t o lower case — pr oduc es a compl ete ly diffe ren t hash val ue, ho wever.
The id eal m edia on whic h to stor e dig ital d ata ar e CD- Rs or DVDs. Use the Dis kcopy
command onl y if you have no other tools to prese rve the origin al data. As in Microsof t file
systems, the Linux file sys tem on a PC has 512-b yte sectors. You might not know what ki nds of
comput ers were used to com mit a crime or how or where they were used. When it finishes, you
should see a window similar to Figure 5-8. The Red Hat Package Man- ager (RPM) utility makes
installing these tools on Red Hat and Fedora Linux much easier. The Digital Intellige nce Image too
l gives you a reliable bac kup of your floppy disk eviden ce. Click Browse, navigate to and click your
work folder, and then click OK twice. 5. Refer to your spreadsheet for the remaining data run
fragments, and repeat Steps 1 through 4 to recover them. One of the most common digital networks,
it uses the full radio frequency spectrum to define channels. It ’ s written to the outermost track of a
disk and contains information about each file stored on the drive. You might need to set up a small
camera to monit or his or her physical activities in the office. Click the Cluster Search tab, and repeat
the search for the account number. The following activity shows you how to use Outlook 2007,
included with Microsoft Office, to copy an e-mail message to a USB drive. ( Note: Depending on
the Outlook version you use, the steps might vary slightly.) You use a similar procedure to copy
messages in other e-mail programs, such as Outlook Express and Evolution. In Chapte r 9, you learn
how to has h specific dat a by using a hexade cimal editor to locate and verify groups of data th at
have no fil e associati on or are sectio ns withi n a file. If this book does not contain a DVD, you are
not getting the full value of your purchase. Typica lly, it takes place in an attor- ney ’ s of fice, where
the at torney req uests your con sultant ’ s report. The unuse d space, 27,000 bytes, is the file slack
(see Figur e 6-7). As a b asic co mput er us er, yo u can so lve mo st so ftwa re pr oble ms by wo rkin
g with a GU I tool. Click Browse, navigate to and click your work folder, click OK, and then click
Next. 4. In the Case Information dialog box, enter your investigator information, and then click
Next. 5. Cl ic k Next until you reach the Refine Case - Default dialog box, shown in Figure 1 2-25.
Your goal whe n acq uiri ng data for a stati c acqu isit ion is to pres erve th e dig ital ev ide nce.
Identifying the Nature of the Case Recall fro m Chapter 2 that when you ’ re assign ed a computing
in vestig ation case, you sta rt by ident ifying th e nature of th e case, inclu ding whe ther it invol ves
the priva te or public sec- tor. The conclusion starts by referring to the report ’ s purpose, states the
main points, draws conclusions, and possibly renders an opinion. Make sure the Data Carve check
box is not selected because this option makes processing take much longer; you can always do data
carving later, if necessary. This is where you want to store a copy of the evidence disk. Like the Sav
ePart comm and, SaveSe ct can save an ent ire drive to a data fil e. Applicants are screened before a
cceptance into the certification program, an d IACIS is the sole decision maker for all applicants. For
exa mpl e, com pute r prog rams an d most “ com- pila tions ” may be reg iste red as “ li tera ry work
s ”; ma ps and arc hite ctura l pla ns may be reg is- tere d as “ picto rial, gra phic, and sc ulptu ral wo
rks. ” Anyt hin g that wo uld or din aril y be copy rig hte d thro ugh no ncomp ute r mean s and is no
w bein g cre ated o n dig ital me dia is c onsi dere d to be c opyr ight ed, as lo ng as th e proc ess fo
r ob tain ing a cop yrig ht has been fo llow ed.
In the similar pictures in Figure 10-1, the one on the left is an EXIF JPEG file, and the one on the
right is a standard JPEG file. After the detectiv e contacted a reliab le informa nt, he had enough
infor - mation for a sea rch warrant and as ked the patrol divisi on to assist him in servin g the war-
rant. Mangraviti, Jr., and Christopher J. Todd. The Comprehensive Forensic Services Manual: The
Essential Resources for All Experts. SEAK, Inc., 2002 Supplement (ISBN 18929040225). Note tha t
Windows Task Ma nager lists th e process as PDServer. Neither the publisher nor its dealers or
distributors assume any liability for any alleged or actual damages arising from the use of this
program. (Some states do not allow for the excusing of implied warranties, so the exclusion may not
apply to you.). Final ly, for people who want to do their own res earch, th e Honeynet Proje ct offers
tools an d methods. Identifying Lab Security Needs All com puter foren sics lab s need an enc losed
roo m where a for ensic wor kstatio n can be set up. We would also welcome scanned, signed copies
sent by email to Hazel White but. Students had an opportunity to see how the computer forensics
problem is approached from different perspective- computer science and criminal justice- and
instructors had an opportunity to learn from each other and to create a productive collaboration
while teaching the course. Also, note any pro fessional train ing you provided or con tribut ed to.
Second International Conference on Computer Evidence, 10-15. Th e text files are usually in pl
aintext or Rich Tex t Format (RTF). Netwo rk servers, rou ters, firew alls, and other dev ices recor d
the activi ties and eve nts that mov e throug h them. This book is not in tended to pro vide comprehe
nsive tra ining in comput er forensics. True or False? 5. Areal density refers to which of the
following? a. To learn where Nau might be, St eve searches the sur face of her desk and notice s
travel brochur es for European tours. Linux in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference.O ’ Reilly
Media, Inc., 2005 (ISBN 0596009305). Then you valida te the data by using the Li nux md5sum
comman d on the origin al drive and the ima ge files. Other Linux Live CDs might have no
password set and simply require pressing Enter. 5. To list the current disk devices connected to the
computer, type fdisk -l (lowercase L) and press Enter. Keep in min d that this inv estigatio n task can
be time consum ing. Yana Kortsarts, Computer Science William Harver, Criminal Justice Widener
University. You should extract all files in the Chap10 folder on the book ’ s DVD to your C:\ Work
\Chap10\Chapter folder (referred to as “ your work folder ” in steps). International Journal of Secure
Software Engineering (IJSSE), 1, 35-61. Linux swa p p artition Figure 11-2 Examining a virtual
machine ’ s swap partition in FTK Imager Virtual Machines Overview 427. Computer Forensics
Software Several computer forensics pro grams, listed previously under “ Featur e s, ” are supplied
with t his book. When you ’ re done, exit FTK by clicking File, Exit from the menu. Case Project 16-
5 Write an opini on paper of two or more pag es describing you r findings in the in-chapt er activitie
s and Hands-On Projec ts. You can use any com puter connec ted to the Internet to sen d and receive
e-mail, which makes Web-bas ed e-mail message s more dif- ficul t to trace. She plans to have you
make this prese ntation to the jury during the trial. T hey are also configured not to mount, or to
mount as read-only, any connected storage media, such as disk drives.

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