The implementation and rapid growth of new technologies has
created new issues. Cybercrime is one of them. Investigation of
crimes involving computers is not a simple process.
To solve cybercrimes and maintain the justice around the
society; there should be cybercrime investigation methods. But Laws are
changeable from state to state. And there are some loop halls in existing laws.
Because of that cybercrime investigators have to face lot of problems. In
this situation; to identify the digital forensics’ role playing
in solving cybercrimes and its pros and cons and find the applicability of it
is the main reason to select this topic.
cybercrimes
Over
the years, internet has made a strong impact on the society in areas such as
social media, cloud computing, marketing, banking as well as in the field of
education. There are advantages as well as disadvantages of using internet when
carrying out the day to day activities. Currently, one of the major problems
faced is the increase of cybercrimes; Moving traditional crimes in to online.
Internet became a playing field to new generation of criminals.
Cybercrime
refers to the act of performing a criminal act using computer or cyberspace.
Cybercrime could include anything as simple as downloading illegal music files
to stealing millions of dollars from online bank accounts.
There are two main categories in cyber-crime.
One category is where a computer network attacks another computer networks. And
second category is, crimes where a target population or individual attacked by
a computer network such as fraud, identity theft. Hacking, Defamation, Cyber-Stalking, Harassment via E-Mails,
Threating, Digital intellectual property
violation, Key logger based attack,
Cyber stalking, Online credit card fraud,
Cyber terrorism, Spying, Virus attacks are some common types of cybercrimes.
Cybercriminals
in worldwide are differentiating the way the crime organize and always they
focus on new user groups and new platforms day by day.
One
of the greatest difficulties for law enforcement against cyber criminals is the
international reach of a cyber-offense, where attacks are not slowed by
physical barriers such as national borders. So growing number of cybercrimes
are huge threat to the world that can’t be ignored.
Digital forensic also known as Computer forensics; is
the using science and technology for investigate or finding, examination,
and reporting of information found on computers and networks (magnetically
stored or encoded) in a criminal or civil court. The purpose of a computer
forensic investigations is to recover data from computers and provide digital
evidence of a specific or general activity. when providing digital
evidence for criminal cases most important point is uncovered evidence should
be collected in a way that is legally acceptable in court.
Employee internet abuse, Unauthorized disclosure of corporate
information and data – Industrial spying, Damage assessment, Criminal fraud
cases, more general criminal cases, hacking incidents, identity thefts are some
common scenarios of using digital forensics.
Increased use of digital devices by general public and with
cybercrimes, analysis of digital evidence became very important element at many
crime scenes.
To protect corporate assets and reputation of today’s companies
and determine the hacker attacks, collect evidence which legally applicable in
court; it is important thing to implement digital forensics methods.Digital
forensics incorporates the fields of computer science and law to investigate
crimes.
Computer files and data will remain in hard drive although they
are deleted.due to “data remanence”Data will be remaining ina binary format or
the residual representation of data. Because of that reason original file can
be recovered.
Not only cybercrimes; Many criminals who engaged criminal
activities such as murder, kidnapping, drug and gun dealing, robbery, sexual
assault sometimes maintain fileswith incriminating evidence on their computer.
So that information on their computers can be used as most power full evidence
to identifying suspects.
Forensic specialist has to uncover digital evidence from rapidly
changing environment. So powerful tools and methods should be there to uncover
or decrypt the crime evidences.
Many digital forensics tools have been created by developers.
Investigation agents can select the tools based on their limitations such as
budget and available experts on the team. Tools can be categories
as premium, free, open source, computer forensics, mobile forensics etc.
SANS Investigative Forensics Toolkit – SIFT, EnCase, Registry
Recon, CAINE, X-Ways Forensics, Open
Computer Forensics Architecture, Digital Forensics Framework are
some tools and framework for digital forensics.
During digital forensic investigation; investigators should not
be changing date/time stamps or changing data itself.
Digital forensic is able to search and analyze huge number of
data quickly and efficient manner and can be introduce as helpful tool which
can retrieve lost, damaged or deleted data. Normally lots of criminal matters
dealing with physical evidences. By using digital forensic it will help to
provide digital/electronic evidence for crimes.
This field is relatively new filed. and some may not understand
it. So investigators and analyst must be able to communicate those findings in
clear and understandable way. so there are some disadvantages as well as
advantages. High cost of data recovery is the main disadvantage of digital
forensic. NormallyComputer forensic investigators hire per hour. Nature of the
case time will be depended.
Law is varying from state to state. In some status warrantless
searches is prohibited. Some laws are written before the digital era. so
investigators have to perform their job with lots of boundaries and
limitations.
Clear and consistent legal procedure regarding digital forensic
should be developed in order to take the advantages from it. And investigators
need to know how to write an appropriate warrant seize, uncover hiding
information from the computers. While prosecutors and judges need to have
better understand on digital forensic.
When we look on digital forensic and cybercrimes we can clearly
observed that these two areas are interrelated together. And it plays major
role in solving cybercrimes.
Among communities there is a misunderstanding and lack of
awareness about the nature of cybercrime, finding digital evidence and the
capacity of law enforcement to catch offenders. Because of that reason some
cybercrime victims are not going to report about them. Digital forensic is good
solution for it.