Webinar: Accelerating Investigations Using Advanced eDiscovery Techniques

Join this free webinar from Nuix to find out how to deal with large volumes of electronic evidence while balancing business demands including reduced budgets and resources, spiralling case backlogs and ever decreasing timescales.

Date: Thursday March 6, 2014
Time: 4:00pm-5:00pm GMT/11:00am-12:00pm ET
Duration: 45min + Q&A
Presenters: Paul Slater, Director of Forensic Solutions EMEA and Ady Cassidy, Director of Investigation Solution Consultancy - Global

Today, investigators face a constant battle to find the truth in ever larger, more varied and increasingly complex stores of electronic evidence. As the growing volume of data has stretched traditional forensic tools to capacity, it has become more difficult to examine everything in deep forensic detail. To improve the efficiency of investigations we need to more effectively zoom in on critical data from the outset, and then focus the time-consuming deep forensic analysis on this data only. This webinar will share workflows and techniques from the legal world of electronic discovery (eDiscovery), which typically has even larger volumes of digital evidence than found in forensic investigations.

Register now at http://info.nuix.com/InvestigationsMar62014_Registration.html

Interview with Andrew Rector, Digital Forensics Student, Bloomsburg University

Andrew, you’re currently studying Digital Forensics at Bloomsburg University. Could you tell us more about the course and what drew you to it?

Digital Forensics is the acquisition and analysis of any digital medium for the purpose of finding and reporting evidence to Government agencies, police, and/or private contractors. At Bloomsburg University we are taught first to have a low-level understanding of what we will be looking at (Binary/Hexadecimal, File System Analysis, and Windows Artifacts), and then we are taught how to use our skills to do real Forensics cases using the prevalent Digital Forensics tools (FTK, EnCase, X-Ways). What really drew me to Digital Forensics the most was the investigative mindset you have to have. When you are doing a case, it’s almost like a chess match between you and the “bad guy”. For me, that’s very exciting, every case is different, and has its own brand of excitement.

You’re also Lab Manager at the Pennsylvania Center for Digital Forensics, doing research on GPS devices and mobile telephones. How did you become interested in this area and what can you tell us about your research?

Cell phones and GPS devices were one of my first major areas of research. They interest me a lot because of the challenge they present, cell phones especially. Forensically analyzing a phone is completely different than analyzing a HDD (Hard Disk Drive). For one, the sheer volume of types of phones make it a challenge, not to mention the different operating systems on each one. Each phone is a new challenge. One of my most exciting research projects with the PACDF was the analysis of a Garmin Nuvi GPS. By analyzing the Garmin forensically, I was able to completely retrace a person’s whereabouts, down to the exact time, date, and location. It’s really very amazing the data that can be found on those types of devices...

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Forensic Software in Child Protection Cases

According to recently released statistics from ICAC, an agency whose aim is to make the internet safer for children, only 2% of reported child protection cases are investigated in the United States each year. Often the media seize every opportunity to disparage forensics organisations, child protection charities and law enforcement agencies for not coming up with more effective solutions to these cases, but the reality is that the investigation of illicit image distribution is a wide-ranging and complex area, fraught with difficulties.

Digital forensics professionals will undoubtedly come across such cases as part of their general workload. Sometimes a case will begin with an investigator specifically looking for suspicious images, whilst at other times the illicit nature of the images will be discovered in the course of an unrelated process. Regardless of the initial push, however, it is undoubtedly one of the most taxing and time-consuming parts of the job.

Internet Watch Foundation – on the frontline

The Internet Watch Foundation in the UK understands the issues around child protection investigation better than most. The IWF fields reports from the public about illicit imagery around the internet, and has been dealing with potentially criminal internet content since 1997. The organisation receives around forty thousand submissions per year, and manages to deal with around ten thousand of these...

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Webinar: Geolocation Artifacts and Timeline Analysis in Digital Forensics

Using Geolocation Artifacts and Timeline Analysis to Solve the Case: A Digital Forensics Case Study

http://info.magnetforensics.com/Digital-Forensics-Case-Study-Webinar/

Date: Wednesday December 11, 2013
Time: 11:00am GMT (6:00am EST)
Duration: 60 mins

In this webinar, Jad Saliba of Magnet Forensics will take you through a fictional case study involving child luring that led to murder. You will discover how digital forensics, geolocation artifacts and timeline analysis in particular can be critical in solving cases like these and where you can look to find the artifacts. The data analyzed will include a PC image and a mobile device image, showing how both sources of evidence can provide valuable insight into what happened, where to start a search for a missing person, and the corroborating evidence to support criminal charges.

REGISTER TODAY HERE

Please share this invitation with any friends or colleagues who might also be interested, thank you.

ForGe – Computer Forensic Test Image Generator

by Hannu Visti

Creating test material for computer forensic teaching or tool testing purposes has been a known problem. I encountered the issue in my studies of Computer Forensics at the University of Westminster. We were assigned a task to compare computer forensic tools and report results. Having already analysed test images by Brian Carrier (http://dftt.sourceforge.net) over and over again, I found myself creating images manually, which appears to be the best and only way of doing this. One of my lecturers, Sean Tohill, confirmed this is indeed the case and a test image generator is long overdue.

The need for such a tool is twofold. In educational setting, the problem of plagiarism can be mitigated by giving each student an individual image to analyse. In application quality testing, one of the tests should be to feed several similar but not identical images to the forensic tool, and compare results, which should be identical...


http://articles.forensicfocus.com/2013/10/18/forge-computer-forensic-test-image-generator/

Interview with Carole Phillips, Trustee, BulliesOut

Carole, you're currently a trustee for BulliesOut. How did you become involved with the charity?

I first heard of BulliesOut through being involved in the charity Children in Wales and contacted the CEO, Linda James, via LinkedIn. We met as I was interested in what the charity did and what involvement the charity had with schools and other professionals working with young people. I was impressed with the dedication of Linda and her desire to get the message out there to young people that no-one has to put up with bullying. The charity looks at all aspects of bullying, working with the bully as well as the victim and also the bystanders who have a crucial role to play. BulliesOut operates in other countries as well as the UK but it was encouraging to learn that it is a Wales based charity and one that is well respected. I was asked to become a Trustee, and although I was not sure what being a Trustee involved, I was happy to join the team. I promote the charity as much as I can with other professionals and young people and although my time is limited due to working full-time and my University studies, I do what I can.

There has been increased coverage of cyber bullying in the media recently. How large a problem is cyber bullying? Is it really growing as fast as the media seem to suggest?

When the tragic deaths of young people such as Hannah Smith and Daniel Perry hit the headlines, the spotlight is rightly focused on social networking sites and how bad they are and what can be done to prevent further deaths. Because of the publicity, it appears that all of a sudden social media has become a problem, yet the truth is that concerns about young people inappropriately using social networking sites have never gone away. Schools can vouch for this in the increased number of incidents they deal with; almost always at the centre of bullying incidents is a social network site or messaging service such as Ask.fm. As was the case in the summer with Ask.fm, there was a public outcry to get the site closed down, but this is not the answer. Whilst publicity about messaging services pushes for stricter monitoring and moderation and to take more responsibility for the care of its primarily young users, educating young people about their behaviour online is vital in driving home the message about safer use...

http://www.forensicfocus.com/c/aid=67/interviews/2013/carole-phillips-trustee-bulliesout/