Computer Crimes: Viewing the Future
Most Important People to Interview
Interviewing people that are researching computer-related crimes and computer forensic in general should mostly include interviewing the people that defined the computer forensic science. It is important to interview such researchers as their publications determined the way that computer forensic is now going; they have laid the foundation for this field of knowledge. It would also be crucial to interview people who were directly involved in the process of solving a computer-related crime. These two types of people would provide a broad theoretical and practical coverage of the topic allowing an interview being more informative and valuable.
Therefore, top three people to interview would be Cliff Stoll, Paul A. Collier, and Barry J. Spaul. The first of the three – Cliff Stoll – is a first person ever to investigate a computer-related crime. In 1986, Stoll pursued a hacker – Markus Hess. In the process of investigation, Stoll used computer and network forensic techniques (Mushtaque, Umer, Ahsan & Mahmood, 2014). He made it possible for other investigators to solve cases by following the same model of evidence-collecting as Stoll used.
Collier and Spaul are often working on different researches in co-authorship. Over the course of the last few decades, they became notorious in computer forensic for their researches in this field of science. Their works are currently being used to broaden the field of computer forensics by a significant number of authors (Ncube, 2015; Brown, 2015).
The questions that would be asked during the interview must be aimed at narrowing the specific aspects of computer forensic in theory and practice alike. Furthermore, the questions must be constructed in a way that the answer would cover as much information on the topic of questions as possible. The questions, therefore, would be:
- What other areas of knowledge could computer forensic benefit from the most?
- What types of networking and computer devices allow for collecting the evidence with most quality?
- How must the investigation unit approach the procedure of solving a case regarding computer-related crimes?
These questions would allow covering practical and theoretical aspects of the forensic science, while also providing sufficient information for further researches or the field activity of forensic units.
Top Three Computer-Related Crimes
According to Eoghan (2011), the most notable computer-related crimes include the cases of Dennis Rader, Joseph E. Duncan III, Sharon Lopatka, Corcoran Group, Dr. Conrad Murray. The three most important of those are Rader’s, Duncan’s, and Lopatka’s. Lopatka’s case, in fact, included following the chains of Sharon Lopatka’s emails to identify her killer – Robert Glass – who was successfully arrested and imprisoned.
All of these cases demonstrate how well-developed forensic practices can efficiently acquire evidence from such sources as floppy disks, hard disk drives (HDDs) and even emails. All of this suggests that computer forensic methods are always pursuing the goal of discovering new ways of collecting and examining the evidence. This allows supposing that in twenty years from now, computer forensics will change in accordance with the changes of computer-related crimes. This means that there will be more ways to detect and collect evidence, identify possible criminals, track and apprehend them (Dezfoli, Mahmoud, Sani & Daryabar, 2013). The security measures that will be undertaken by large companies and individual users alike will become more sophisticated effectively reducing the risk of committing a computer-related crime.
Types of Evidence
According to the research performed by Quick and Choo (2014), it is most important to look for evidence regarding computer-related crimes in such locations as PC (including hard drives), mobile phone, portable storages (USB, etc.), network stored data and cloud storage data. It is also paramount to ensure that it is allowed to search for the evidence as some companies’ regulations and certain laws restrict forensic units from examining personal belongings without permission. As for the purpose of looking for evidence in the abovementioned locations, it is explained by the fact that these types of storages are the most common to store one’s personal information. The residual information that was not properly deleted may also be collected from hard drives, portable storages, and cloud storage data. This allows for covering most of the possible locations in which the evidence might be stored.
Therefore, performing a thorough research of the PC’s hard drives, portable storages, data stored in mobile phone’s memory, network stored data, and cloud storage data will most likely lead the investigators to collect all of the needed evidence to solve a computer-related crime successfully.
Improvement of the Forensic Interview Process
There are a significant number of other researchers that may be interviewed as well. With the involvement of other authors and computer forensic specialists, the conversation is most likely to cover a more significant amount of information which will ensure that most discussed issues of the modern computer forensic science are addressed and evaluated. Furthermore, there will be an opportunity to present different opinions on each question which further deepens the community’s understanding of the topic and the approach that should be taken regarding computer forensics.
Aside from the interviews, it would be most advisable to engage different key people involved in computer forensic science to work in co-authorship and convey researches on possible solutions for the problems at hand. Such collaborations would also increase the amount of useful data that would contribute to the investigation of computer-related crimes and computer forensic practices.
References
Brown, C. S. D. (2015). Investigating and prosecuting cyber crime: Forensic dependencies and barriers to justice. International Journal of Cyber Criminology, 9(1), 55-119.
Dezfoli, F. N., Dehghantanha, A., Mahmoud, R., Sani, N., & Daryabar, F. (2013). Digital forensic trends and future. International Journal of Cyber-Security and Digital Forensics, 2(2), 48-76.
Eoghan, C. (2011). Digital evidence and computer crime. New York, NY: Elsevier.
Mushtaque, K., Umer, A., Ahsan, K., & Mahmood, N. (2014). Digital forensic models: A comparative study based in large enterprises of Pakistan. Research Journal of Recent Sciences, 3(8), 103-110.
Ncube, N. (2015). Procedures for searching evidence in the investigation of computer-related crime in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Web.
Quick, D., Choo, K. R. (2014). Data reduction and data mining framework for digital forensic evidence: Storage, intelligence, review and archive. Trends & Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice, 480. Web.