Cyber Forensics (Computer Forensics) Facts and Research in India

Cyber forensics or computer forensics is a field of science that works on computer storage media and collects, preserves and presents the information in an acceptable form of law. So it is obvious that cyber forensics is strictly based on digital media or rather computer. Now we all know that how computer technology has changed our world in every aspect.

As the phrase states that ?with great power comes great responsibility?, so with the emerging technology of digital media there comes a huge responsibility to keep it smoothly running as there are many fraudulent people who are constantly trying to break the security. Digital evidence is quite fragile as anyone can change the information and that can be done by any criminal, hacker or just the employee of the organization.

Background

With the development of computer or digital technology there comes cyber crime. These can be in any form like hacking into sites, child pornography, copyright violation and many more. With the time the definition of cyber crime and also cyber forensics has changed. Now many of us many might think that cyber forensics is a technology that investigates and collects information about cyber crime. Yes it is true by some part but it?s not the only field of it. There are many more fields where cyber forensics is needed. Around the world it is getting popular as people are now thinking a good career in this field and also laws and judgements are now highly dependent on it.

Facts that Works

• We may think that if the computer parts like hard drive got burned then the data may be lost. But on an investigation it?s been seen that the burned hard drive didn?t lost the individual data platters due to heat. Also too much burning may damage it all.
• In another investigation in a corporation a corrupt employee installed many key loggers in the computers to have the credentials. Now the forensics experts tracked back to the installation date and time and with that matched the security camera footage and marked the thief.
• This is a funny one that one couple trying to cheat a property dealer. The dealer handed over the documents to the couple but the couple made a copy of that with different date so that they can prove that they have paid more than that of market price. While investigating it?s seen that the couple didn?t have MS Word in their computer. So the case becomes so easy to solve.
• In a case where a cargo ship sunk, one of its clients asked an investigation. Upon examining the computer files it?s seen in the log files that the file?s data were altered after the ship sunk.
• In a US District Attorney office more than 30000 files were burned into 2 CDs. The office couldn?t access those files as the files were unreadable. Forensics experts found that the files are GIF files and the header files are not arranged for those files. So they fixed the bug and files were recovered.

Process

Cyber forensics is used not only in the field of cyber crime but also in the continuous monitoring of the digital media. Now there are three types of files that present in a computer.

• Active data, which are easy to access and used by operating system and are common data files and log files.
• Next is archived data, which is stored and backed up in a backup tape, CD, floppy or even entire hard drive.
• The hard one is latent data, which is deleted and overwritten and needs special tools to access those files.

Now cyber forensics deals with all those data and works on those in an orderly manner. The digital data are first recovered and stored in a safe place. Next experts make a catalog of the active, archived and latent data. After recovery of data and analysis it?s been present to the court and provides expert testimony witness.

Research in INDIA

In India cyber laws are not so up to date relating to the technological growth in the field. In the ?The Information Technology Act? (Act 21 of 2000) have specified some extra laws and amendments. More can be found on CDAC website.
The govt as well as the private sectors are taking part in the cyber forensics. Many private investigation farms are into this. Here is some site information which may help in the context:
Cyber Forensics

Perry4Law

IFSR

Forensics Guru

PTLB

I hope after going through this article you will have an clear picture about cyber forensics and all the rules and regulations associated with this and probable fate of breaking these rules.

Posted on Thursday, July 26th, 2012

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