Two years ago a computer forensic program was developed by The Marshall University Forensic Science Center. Sice then the West Virginia State Troopers have been investigating computer crimes with the help of this forensic program. The director of the center said computer evidence is used in cases involving child pornography, embezzlement, drugs and even homicide.
Its a known fact that today computers can be used to perpetrate a crime or contain evidence linked to other types of offenses. Also, if a computer isn’t actually used to commit the crime, there may still be evidence found on the computer, such as communication records. And this is what is collected by the investigating officers to provide the digital evidence laboratory with the majority of the evidence. Although, some evidence is collected directly at the laboratory, but majority of the evidence comes from the forensic center.
And the best part since the introduction of this program is that the forensic experts dont have to everytime sit and surf the web. They receive tips and then they start digging the truth in the news. This not only saves their time but also helps them in managing the huge list computer crimes within their limited number of forensic experts. Their senior experts point out that child pornography consumes a substantial amount of their investigative time. This is so because child pornography is more pervasive than one might anticipate.
In most of the cases the evidence could include computers, cell phones, digital cameras or other electronic devices. The Bureau of Justice Assistance funds the computer forensics program with a $750,000 grant. It is worth to note that people around the world are realizing that computer forensics is an important part of forensic science that can help in solving complex criminal cases, with some ease.
With every company trying to outsmart their competitors, this competition is not staying healthy. Some companies are using wrong means to either defame or cause huge losses to their competitor(s). The wrong means indlude bribing competitor’s employee to reveal secrets or manipulating/deleting important information of the competitor by gaining unethical access to their systems. All such activities fall under the umbrella of electronic data tampering. This concept when extended to someone who has been served with a lawsuit, is known as electronic evidence tampering, which has been rising exponentially.
A recent report by KPMG said that technology-related fraud has also emerged as ‘the fastest-growing and most pervasive category of fraud’ in the business world. In 2004, just 19 per cent of the firms polled reported such offences; by last year, the figure was 59 per cent. There is no way to determine exactly how widespread tampering of electronic evidence is, but law firms, enforcement agencies, private sector computer forensics firms such as KPMG and are all seeing the uptrend.
Where previously the person would just delete e-mail correspondence or documents, many now format their hard disks or use specialised electronic erasing programs to cover their electronic trails. They tamper with or destroy electronic evidence by downloaded hacking tools or installing an unsecured wireless network before sending out defamatory e-mail messages or even changing their hard disk or computer.
Although tampering with the evidences can attract punishment that could also bring jail. Despite the hefty penalties, experts believe cases of tampering with or destroying evidence will continue to rise, as the perpetrators are getting better at it.
There have been numerous cases in India, wherein crimes were commited and the criminals went unpunished. Why? Because the IT Act 2000 had many loop holes and the cyber criminals exploited the same. The police and the law enforcement could only watch the criminal executing the crime, but could do nothing. But this scenario promises to change soon.
Recently the Indian government decided to amend the Information Technology Act 2000 by incorporating new provisions. Now, the cyber forensics devices and tools used for cracking cyber crimes would be treated as evidence in the court of law. The main objective behind this amendment is to develop indigenous cyber forensics technology to make the country self-reliant in combating cyber crimes. The government is also stressing on the development of tools for cyber forensics, state-of-the-art training in cyber forensics and technical services like cyber crime analysis and cyber crime investigation.
These steps by the Indian government promises to combat cyber crime in India to a higher degree, than what it is now.
With the annual rate of cyber crimes increasing at 100 percent, the cyber cell of Delhi Police made a great effort in training 100 officials.
The officials had undergone a six-weeks training programme at the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University. They were given training in hardware and software, computer networks, cyber crime, digital fraud, incident response systems, computer forensics fundamentals, cyber law, e-mail crime, cyber forensics, credit card frauds and e-mail tracing. The training program concluded recently and the first batch of 100 investigating officers of Delhi Police and 2 officers of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) were handed certificates in ‘Cyber Crime Investigation and Computer Forensics’ yesterday.
With terrorists and criminals, increasingly using computers to accomplish terrorists attacks, threats and scams, the need for police officers who can investigate cyber crimes has risen manifold. This was a great effort undertaken by the Delhi Police to train its officials to fight against the increasing white collar crimes.
Delhi Police Commissioner Y.S. Dadwal said that 100 more officers would undergo similar training soon.
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.
The computer forensics business is booming, given the rise in the rate of cyber crimes. Every industry is facing some or the other problems related to the web. But the most ill effected industry is the IT industry. Computer forensics is the most secretive part of the IT industry because most of the evidence that convicts wrong-doers is nowadays stored in computer hard disks, emails, portable storage media like USB drives, ipods, etc.
Given below is the link to an article that explains this point further.
Few days ago, we had an interactive demo explaining about computer forensics. Now we are trying to explain its importance, with reference to a real life story of Michael Fiola. How Computer Forensics helped him and much more in the slideshow given below.
Recent reports on employment trends indicate Computer Forensics to be one of the fastest growing occupations; thus creating a lot of job opportunities in this field. There has been a huge demand for computer forensic experts to prevent cyber crimes and support law enforcement agencies.
To complement the needs of computer forensic experts, Management & Science University (MSU) based in Malaysia offers Bachelor and Diploma programmes in Computer Forensics through its Faculty of Information Sciences and Engineering (FISE).
For more information on these courses, visit: www.msu.edu.my
