Digital Forensics: Introduction

Digital forensics is the science of analysing and extracting digital evidence from computers and storage devices, such as hard drives, cell phones, PDAs, and other electronic storage devices. Digital forensics can also be described as computer forensics or e-discovery. The goal of digital forensics is to examine digital media in a forensically sound manner to identify, preserve, recover, analyse, and present facts and opinions about digital information. Digital forensics can be used for investigations and prosecutions of computer crimes such as internet fraud, theft, data breaches, cyber-bullying, cyberstalking etc… users should gather digital evidence with highly accurate procedures for properly gathering this evidence; anyone can use it in court. Computer hardware components such as hard disk drives (HDDs), solid state disks, solid-state flash drives etc., may contain valuable information related to an investigation or case; however, these are prone to data loss due to various reasons like natural causes or intentional deletion by a user/owner themselves or even by someone else who has access to your computer systems using malicious intent towards you or your institution.

Objectives of Digital Forensics

There are many objectives of using a computer and digital forensics. The ability of the investigation agency to use computers and associated materials as evidence in court is aided by their recovery, analysis, and preservation. Speculating on the crime’s motivation and the main offender is helpful. Creating procedures at a crime scene that assist you in ensuring the digital evidence you collect is not tampered with—obtaining and duplicating data, recovering erased partitions and contents from digital media to gather proof and confirm it. It allows you to estimate the probable impact of the malicious action on the victim and aids in the speedy identification of the evidence. It also helps create a computer forensic report that thoroughly explains the enquiry.

Types of Digital Forensics

Computer forensic investigations come in a variety of forms. Each focus on a particular area of information technology. The following are some of the prevalent types:

Database Forensics: analysing database information, including data and associated metadata.

Email Forensics: the retrieval and analysis of emails and other data from email services, like contacts and schedules.

Malware Forensics: examining the payload of potentially harmful applications after sifting through their source code. Trojan horses, ransomware, and other malware might be present in such programs.

Memory Forensic: gathering data from a computer’s cache and random-access memory (RAM).

Mobile Forensics: looking through mobile devices to find and examine the data they hold, such as contacts, text messages (both received and sent), images, and video files.

Network Forensics: using tools like a security system or intrusion detection system to monitor network traffic in search of evidence.

Digital Forensics Challenges

These are the principal difficulties that digital forensic face:

• The rise in personal computers and widespread usage of the internet
• Tools for hacking are readily available.
• The prosecution is challenging due to a lack of tangible proof.
• This investigation work is challenging because of the vast amount of storage space in Terabytes.
• Any technology advancement necessitates a solution upgrade or modification.

Techniques for forensic investigation

Investigators employ various strategies and specialised forensic software to review the duplicate they have created of a hacked device. They look for copies of deleted, encrypted, or damaged files in hidden folders and unallocated drive space. In advance of legal processes that require discovery, depositions, or actual litigation, any evidence discovered on the digital copy is thoroughly documented in a finding report and validated with the original device.

Reverse Steganography. Data can be concealed using steganography in any digital file, message, or data stream. Computer forensic specialists can undo a steganography attempt. The image may appear identical before and after, but the underlying hash or string of data will change.

Stochastic forensics. Without using digital artefacts, investigators, in this case, examine and reconstruct digital behaviour. Unintentional changes to data that result from digital processes are called artefacts. Artifacts are evidence of a digital crime, including modifications made to file attributes during data theft. Stochastic forensics is routinely used in data breach investigations where the attacker is suspected to be an insider who might not leave behind digital evidence.

Cross-drive investigation This method searches for, analyses, and preserves material pertinent to an inquiry by correlating and cross-referencing data on several computer discs. Information from other drives is compared to suspicious events to seek patterns and context. Anomaly detection is another name for this.

Live analysis. System tools assess a computer while operating from within the OS. The research examines volatile data frequently kept in RAM or cache. Several tools demand that the computer is in a forensic lab to maintain the credibility of a chain of evidence.

I deleted file recovery. This method entails checking the computer’s memory and system for bits of files that were partially erased in one location but left traces in other areas. Data carving or file carving are different names for this.

Benefits and Application of Digital Forensic

There are many advantages of digital forensics. It helps to guarantee the computer system’s integrity and present evidence in court that will allow the guilty party to be punished. If a company’s computer systems or networks are compromised, it aids the company in obtaining crucial information. It plays an active role in finding cybercriminals wherever they may be. It contributes to the financial and time security of the company. It allows for extracting, processing, and interpreting factual evidence, proving cybercrime in court.

Conclusion

In both the public and private sectors, digital forensics is crucial to many aspects of human activity. Digital forensics has advanced significantly over the past 50 years from an unorganised activity to a regulated applied science. Digital forensics analysts help law enforcement in solving crimes. Each division has a particular toolkit that collaborates with various sorts of evidence. This is conducted while abiding by specific guidelines and specialised processes.