Agape Blog

The 18th meeting of the International Association of Forensic Sciences (IAFS) is commencing from today in New Orleans, USA. It is a 5 day event which will cover discussions about forensic sciences. Many practicing professionals will be attending this event to share their expertise and knowledge on various aspects of forensics; ranging from fingerprint detection and identification to forensic pathology, forensic biology, cyber crimes and investigations, forensic psychiatry,  etc.

IAFS was inaugurated in 1957 to bring together academics and practicing professionals of various disciplines in forensic science.

Click here for more information about this event.

We had attended the largest IT security event in South East Asia: SECURASIA. It was a 2 day event held in Malaysia. We were the Diamond sponsors for the event. The slideshow given below describes all the activities we had at the event.

Like any school, Bexley Grammar School had their annual Maths & Science week during the last week. This time they came up with a very novel concept and made their 9 year old students cyber crime investigators. The students were divided into groups and skills like fingerprinting and testing hair samples were taught to them by some of the forensic professionals. They were then sent to a makeshift crime scene within the school to implement their forensic skills into practice and solve the mysteries.

It just shows that educational institutes have already understood the importance of forensic science and are trying to build forensic experts for the future. Such initiatives globally will create lot of awareness and reduce the percentage of crimes.

Agape have launched a drive to fight against terrorism. It is called ‘Mission Mrityunjay’ and Nagpur Police have also been a part of this drive. The word ‘Mrityunjay’ means ‘Victory Over Death’. The aim behind this idea is to create awareness among school and college students against the dangers of terrorism.

The motto of the mission is- “Remaining alert is our religion and making aware is our mission .”

Mission Mrityunjay includes people from all walks of life, especially those who move around a lot and mix with all sorts of people. Whenever any person senses any suspicious activity, they should call the Police and inform about the same. This involvement from the Nagpurians will reduce the threat from terrorist activities. A website for this drive has also been created, which can be accessed at: http://missionmrityunjay.com

Tell a Cop helpline numbers are: +91-712-2566600/2564333

I just found a very useful white paper, which explains the top tips when collecting electronic evidence for . I hope this helps all the cyber forensic investigators.

Here’s the link to the white paper: http://www.forensics.com/pdf/Top_Ten.pdf

Using a tool called COBRA Expansion Unit, the process of file password recovery speeds up. COBRA works with password recovery applications such as Password Recovery Tool Kit (PRTK) and Distributed Network Attack (DNA).

The special focus of COBRA is on hard-to-crack algorithms used by RAR or Office 2007 file formats, where the recovery process is time consuming. Hence it is called as Code Breaker Accelerator.

COBRA is the first member of ICS hardware accelerator family. And a tool that every Computer Forensic investigator must have.

More details can be found at ICS’s website.

A firm in Lucknow has introduced a technology called Cyber Cafe Monitoring System (CCMS). It comprises techniques like biometric system, for taking image of fingerprints of people using a computer system, taking photographs, public IP address and MAC address.

Lucknow police had organized a slide show for around 150 cyber café owners to make them aware of this technology. According to the police, the technology is designed in such a manner that the database will be recorded for a period of two months and if a criminal has used a particular computer system and after a few days again uses any computer system attached to the main server of the technology, his identity will be revealed and an SMS will reach the police officials of the concerned police station in a couple of seconds.

Currently this software costs around Rs.7000 (in India). Some of the cyber cafés have already installed this system. This system will definitely reduce the rate of cyber crime as people use cyber cafes to commit cyber crimes and cyber bullying.

We at Agape have been developing a unique data recovery software for mobile phones and other hand held devices. The special recovery tool can extract information from a mobile phone and thus help in forensic investigation.

This software is being developed in Microsoft .Net technology. Our development team has been working very hard for this unique software since the last 6 months. This software is currently under testing process and will be launched in the Beta version soon.

Anthony Reyes and Jack Wiles present the first book that combines cyber crime and digital forensic topics to provides law enforcement and IT security professionals with the information needed to manage a digital investigation.

It provides a step by step approach for analyzing forensic data and recovering digital evidence. Also it includes instructions for building a digital forensics lab.

A new crime fighting tool: FRED has been launched for digital data recovery.
FRED is an acronym for Forensic Recovery Evidence Device and is a powerful computer using advanced technologies. It has a single mission; which is to recover digital evidence from whatever electronic devices that may have been used in the commission of a crime.

FRED can recover information from different hard drives and other data storage devices like floppy discs, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, Compact Flash, Micro Drives, Smart Media, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, xD Cards and secure digital media and multimedia cards.

This means that devices ranging from cell phones to iPods to servers to supercomputers can be interrogated by FRED, thus helping in digital forensic process and cyber crime investigations.