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الجمعة، 16 فبراير 2018

An Introduction To Computer Forensic Investigation

By Donald Davis


Over the years, the world has witnessed a dramatic change in the techniques that criminals use to perpetuate fraud. These days, the criminal enterprise is modernized, with computers being used to commit age old crimes such as bank robbery and identity theft. Computer forensic investigation is often undertaken to uncover evidence of crime.

Most people assume that once a person presses the delete key on a PC, the deleted data becomes irretrievable. For many newbie cyber criminals, this may be contrived as lost evidence. However, this is certainly not the case.

When you delete anything from your machine, it still remains in memory. The delete command is a simple instruction to the computer to free up the slot occupied by that data. Once this command is received, the data is shifted to a separate and hidden section of memory. It can still be obtained using a set of techniques and specialty software.

A significant part of the work done by a forensic investigator is checking hard drives. This happens quite regularly in law enforcement agencies. The results generated after auditing a hard drive may bring to light evidence of crimes such as fraud, which in effect is the greatest contributor of online crime.

Contrary to popular belief, cyber crime does not solely revolve around fraud. Child pornography can also be viewed as crime. By uncovering what lies hidden in the memory of a PC, prosecution teams can piece together deleted evidence and use it to bring a perpetrator of child pornography to justice.

In the corporate world, forensic investigations play a major role in ensuring financial deals are transparent. It is easy to alter accounting software to report a falsified tax return. Such an act can be laid bare when a company wide system audit is conducted.

In an ordinary organization, an audit may involve the retrieval of original financial data and comparing it with what the accounting software in the organization had reported. The process may drag on for weeks and months depending on how much data the investigator is dealing with. Nevertheless, the outcome is always on point.

IT specialists who major in forensics usually double up as expert witnesses. Where evidence has been retrieved, an expert witness ought to give the court an understandable account of how the evidence was obtained before the jury can pass judgment. This is a field that is quite promising for anyone who envisions a career in forensics.

Computer theft is a very easy crime to solve. Every PC has a unique identifier that its owner can refer to when asked to prove his ownership. A stolen PC is likely to have had its unique identifier erased. Through simple data reconstruction, the police can ascertain the rightful owner of a machine reported as stolen.

Forensics is a growing field and is one of the best weapons that the police have against modern day crooks. If you hope to get into it someday, you should enroll for a technology course like computer science. You may also take a certificate course in forensics to get the skills required for the job.




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