Will the Cybersecurity Act Affect Digital Forensics?

Last week, senators John D. Rockefeller (D-WVA) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) introduced the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 calling for the addition of a National Security Advisor to the executive branch. The bill would give this advisor, and effectively the president emergency powers over both public and private networks. Its unintended consequences could dramatically impact digital forensics.

By Rebecca Waters

read more

Are An IT Literate Judge And Jury Necessary For A Fair Trial?

These days it is unusual to come across a person who does not own a computer, PDA, or mobile phone. For this reason, electronic devices are being admitted as evidence in an increasingly large proportion of legal cases. As technology progresses apace, and analysis becomes more complex, the question arises: How computer literate do a judge and jury need to be to ensure a safe verdict?

andrew frowen

Mobile Calls Reveal Killers

A web of mobile phone evidence led police to the killers of Ucal Chin and Tyrone Gilbert. Experts analyzed 80,000 calls from 29 phones and plotted patterns of contact. Using cell-sites, the locations of antennae through which calls and texts are rooted, police placed Gooch Gang members at key locations.

manchester evening news

How Far Is Too Far in E-Discovery?

Can a trial court order one litigant in a civil suit to provide a court-appointed computer forensic expert access to its computer hard drives for mirror imaging and searching, if the opposing side pays the costs?

law.com

Computer Forensics Lab Is Overwhelmed With Child Pornography

Sgt. Adam Holland of the Fort Smith Police Department, sent a notice that its computer forensic lab can only accept emergency cases. It operates one of only three computer forensic labs in Arkansas. "We're looking at a six month backlog," said Holland. "Eighty-five percent of what we do remains child exploitation."

4029tv.com

FBI Computer Forensics Gets National Thumbs-Up

Representatives of the FBI’s Philadelphia Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory in Radnor, Pennsylvania, said yesterday that observers should find comparatively little to criticize about their facility. Yesterday, the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board (ASCLD/LAB) officially accredited the lab.

the bulletin

Challenge Yourself

The DFRWS is looking for participants in their DFRWS 2009 Challenge focusing on the development of tools and techniques for analyzing Playstation 3’s (PS3s). The challenge scenario requires analysis of a physical memory dump, file system images, and network. The goal of this and past challenges is to spur advances in the state of the art in research and tools. Submissions are due by July 12, 2009.

dfrws

Forensic Firms Forming Critical Mass

Kevin Lothridge, CEO of Largo, Florida’s, National Forensic Science Technology Center wants to attract more forensics-oriented companies to create a critical mass of firms serving the forensic science community.

tampa bay business journal

Stroz Friedberg Opens San Francisco Office

Stroz Friedberg, Inc. has opened its newest U.S. office at 101 Montgomery Street in downtown San Francisco. Leading the firm's San Francisco operations is David E. Garrett, who joined Stroz Friedberg as a Managing Director. Mr. Garrett will supervise a team of incident first-responders and a computer forensics lab capable of handling the most sophisticated digital evidence investigations, as well as complex electronic discovery projects.

read more

ZyLAB Announces Release of Legal Review Solution

ZyLAB has broadened its ZyIMAGE E-discovery and Production platform to include a new linear legal review tool that is accessible through a standard web browser. This platform offers organizations a robust and comprehensive solution by bundling tools for information management, identification, preservation, collection, processing, review, analysis, and production.

read more

iPhone Forensics Demonstration

In this webcast, Jonathan A. Zdziarski, author of iPhone Open Application Development, demonstrates how to install his forensics toolkit on any existing model iPhone and send a raw disk image to a desktop machine. He also shows you how to recover files specific to the iPhone including deleted keyboard caches, photos, web objects, and much more.

fsmdotcom

Mac Forensics: Did he roll the clock back?

Determine if an electronic document date has been tampered with. Step by step directions for determining the true date of creation for a document.

george starcher

Digital DNA

Generally speaking, a specific piece of malware has several traits that make it malicious and define its individual behaviors. These class characteristics when applied to the individual malware specimen, become a series of individual characteristics, or a DNA chain. This DNA chain can then be used to identify the software as malicious in nature. Here’s how to identify individual malware characteristics and analyze their potential damage.

forensic incident response

Detecting Computer Users’ Activities

This is a multi part series discussing different artifacts that can be recovered that provide provable facts regarding a user's computer activity. It is easy to speculate on actions based on speculative data such as access data or related files or dll's accessed on a system, but it is always better to rely on a repeatable process that creates a specific artifact each time to explain a user's action.

hacking exposed computer forensics blog