Digital evidence

About: Digital evidence is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1621 publications have been published within this topic receiving 18476 citations.

Digital Evidence: Challenging the Presumption of Reliability

Abstract: There is a general tendency among courts to presume that forensic software reliably yields accurate digital evidence. As a judicial construct, this presumption is unjustified in that it is not tailored to separate accurate results from inaccurate ones. The authors illustrate this unfortunate truth by the presentation of two currently uncorrected weaknesses in popular computer forensic tools, methods, and assumptions. Some percentage of these forensic software errors (and ones like them) will necessarily have negative effects on parties, whether in terms of faulty criminal convictions or improper civil judgments. The authors argue that the collective value of these negative effects among parties is far larger than the costs of research and development required to prevent such negative effects. Under a purely rational economic approach to the law, this dynamic constitutes an inefficiency to be corrected through the proper application of rules. The authors advance two approaches to cure current defe...

The potential of digital evidence to contribute to risk assessment of internet offenders

Abstract: There is a widely held view among the general public and some professionals that individuals convicted or cautioned solely for internet-related offences inevitably present a significant risk of direct harm to children. Insofar as evidence in relation to this exists, it seems to indicate that internet offenders constitute a heterogeneous group, some of whom may present a significant risk of future contact offending, but many of whom, perhaps a majority, do not. It is essential that risk assessment procedures are developed which can discriminate reliably between relatively high-risk and low-risk groups. The sheer volume, complexity and inaccessibility of digital evidence has deterred a systematic analysis of the relationship between downloaded material and potential risk. However, rather than being regarded as an impenetrable confusion of information, it is possible to regard downloaded material as a golden opportunity to analyse unequivocal evidence of sexual and possibly also personality deviance known to be associated with risk. It also offers the potential of informing and validating other assessment procedures, including interview.

A Fog-Based Digital Forensics Investigation Framework for IoT Systems

Abstract: The increasing number of IoT devices is prompting the need to investigate digital forensic techniques that can be efficiently applied to solve computer-related crimes involving IoT devices. In digital forensics, it is common for forensic investigators to consider computing hardware and operating systems for forensic data acquisition. However, applying current forensic data acquisition techniques for further digital evidence analysis may not be applicable to some IoT devices. It is becoming increasingly challenging to determine what type of data should be collected from IoT devices and how traces from such devices can be leveraged by forensic investigators. In this paper, we introduce a fog-based IoT forensic framework (FoBI) that attempts to address the key challenges associated with digital IoT forensics. Throughout this paper, we discuss the overall architecture, use cases and implementation details of FoBI. We further use our FoBI framework to provide insights on improving the digital forensics processes involving IoT systems.