Digital Forensics (DF) is defined as the ensemble of methods, tools and techniques used to collect, preserve and analyse digital data originating from any type of digital media involved in an incident with the purpose of extracting valid evidence for a court of law. DF investigations are usually performed as a response to a digital crime and, as such, they are termed Reactive Digital Forensic (RDF). An RDF investigation takes the traditional (or post-mortem) approach of investigating digital crimes after incidents have occurred. This involves identifying, preserving, collecting, analyzing, and generating the final report. Although RDF investigations are effective, they are faced with many challenges, especially when dealing with anti-forensic incidents, volatile data and event reconstruction. To tackle these challenges, Proactive Digital Forensic (PDF) is required. By being proactive, DF is prepared for incidents. In fact, the PDF investigation has the ability to proactively collect data, preserve it, detect suspicious events, analyze evidence and report an incident as it occurs. This dissertation focuses on the detection and analysis phase of the proactive investigation system, as it is the most expensive phase of the system. In addition, theories behind such systems will be discussed. Finally, implementation of the whole proactive system will be tested on a botnet use case (Zeus). / Graduate / 0984 / 0537 / soltanalharbi@hotmail.com

Digital Forensics (DF) is defined as the ensemble of methods, tools and techniques used to collect, preserve and analyse digital data originating from any type of digital media involved in an incident with the purpose of extracting valid evidence for a court of law. DF investigations are usually performed as a response to a digital crime and, as such, they are termed Reactive Digital Forensic (RDF). An RDF investigation takes the traditional (or post-mortem) approach of investigating digital crimes after incidents have occurred. This involves identifying, preserving, collecting, analyzing, and generating the final report. Although RDF investigations are effective, they are faced with many challenges, especially when dealing with anti-forensic incidents, volatile data and event reconstruction. To tackle these challenges, Proactive Digital Forensic (PDF) is required. By being proactive, DF is prepared for incidents. In fact, the PDF investigation has the ability to proactively collect data, preserve it, detect suspicious events, analyze evidence and report an incident as it occurs. This dissertation focuses on the detection and analysis phase of the proactive investigation system, as it is the most expensive phase of the system. In addition, theories behind such systems will be discussed. Finally, implementation of the whole proactive system will be tested on a botnet use case (Zeus). / Graduate / 0984 / 0537 / soltanalharbi@hotmail.com

Digital Forensic investigations play a vital role in our technologically enhanced world, and it may incorporate a number of different types of evidence — ranging from digital to physical. During a Digital Forensics investigation an investigator may formulate a number of hypotheses, and in order to reason objectively about them, an investigator must take into account such evidence in its entirety, relying on multiple sources. When formulating such objective reasoning an investigator must take into account not only inculpatory evidence but also exculpatory evidence and evidence of tampering. In addition, the investigator must factor in the reliability of the evidence used, the potential for error (tool and human based) and they must factor in the certainty with which they can make various claims. By doing so and creating a detailed audit trail of all actions performed by the investigator they can be better prepared against challenges against their work when it is presented. An investigator must also take into account the dynamic aspects of an investigation, such as certain evidence no longer being admissible, and they must continuously factor these aspects into their reasoning, to ensure that their conclusions still hold. Investigations may draw over a large period of time, and should the relevant information not be captured in detail, it may be lost or forgotten, affecting the reliability of an investigator’s findings and affecting future investigators’ capability to build on and continue an investigator’s work. In this dissertation we investigate whether it is possible to provide a formalised means for capturing and encoding an investigator’s reasoning process, in a detailed and structured manner. By this we mean we would like to capture and encode an investigator’s hypotheses, their arguments, their conclusions and the certainty with which they can make such claims, as well as the various pieces of evidence (digital and physical) that they use as a foundation for their arguments. We also want to capture the steps an investigator took when formulating these arguments and the steps an investigator took in order to get evidence into its intended form. The capturing of such a detailed reasoning process helps to allow for a more thorough reconstruction of an investigator’s finding, further improving the reliability that can be placed in them. By encoding the investigator’s reasoning process, an investigator can more easily receive feedback on the impacts that the various dynamic aspects of an investigation have upon their reasoning. In order to achieve these goals, our dissertation presents a model, called the Chain of Findings, allowing investigators to formulate and capture their reasoning process throughout the investigation, using a combination of goal-driven and data-driven approaches. When formulating their reasoning, the model allows investigators to treat evidence, digital and physical, uniformly as building blocks for their arguments and capture detailed information of how and why they serve their role in an investigator’s reasoning process. In addition, the Chain of Findings offers a number of other uses and benefits including the training of investigators and Digital Forensic Readiness. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Computer Science / unrestricted

The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) environment constitutes an integral part of our daily lives. Individual computer users and large corporate companies are increasingly dependent on services provided by ICT. These services range from basic communication to managing large databases with corporate client information. Within these ICT environments something is bound to go wrong for a number of reasons, which include an intentional attack on information services provided by an organisation. These organisations have in turn become interested in tracing the root cause of such an incident with the intent of successfully prosecuting a suspected malicious user. Digital forensics has developed signi cantly towards prosecuting such criminals. The volumes of information and rapid technological developments have contributed to making simple investigations rather cumbersome. In the digital forensics community a number of digital forensic process models have been proposed encapsulating a complete methodology for an investigation. Software developers have also greatly contributed toward the development of digital forensics tools. These developments have resulted in divergent views on digital forensic investigations. This dissertation presents the IDFPM - Integrated Digital Forensic Process Model. The model is presented after examining digital forensic process models within the current academic and law enforcement literature. An adapted sequential logic notation is used to represent the forensic models. The terminology used in the various models is examined and standardised to suit the IDFPM. Finally, a prototype supports a limited selection of the IDFPM processes, which will aid a digital forensic investigator. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Computer Science / unrestricted

Over the decades, computer forensics has expanded from primarily examining computer evidence found on hard drives into the examination of digital devices with increasing storage capacity, to the identification of crimes and illegal activities involving the use of computers, to addressing standards and practices deficiencies, and to addressing the need to educate and train law enforcement, computer forensic technicians, and investigators. This dissertation presents the concept mapping case domain modeling approach to aid examiners/investigators in searching and identifying digital evidence and analyzing the case domain during the examination and analysis phase of the computer forensic investigation. The examination and analysis phases of a computer forensic process are two of the most important phases of the investigative process because the search for and identification of evidence data is crucial to a case; any data uncovered will help determine the guilt or innocence of a suspect. In addition, these phases can become very time consuming and cumbersome. Therefore, finding a method to reduce the amount of time spent searching and identifying potential evidence and analyzing the case domain would greatly enhance the efficiency of the computer forensic process. The hypothesis of this dissertation is that the concept mapping case domain modeling approach can serve as a method for organizing, examining, and analyzing digital forensic evidence and can enhance the quality of forensic examinations without increasing the time required to examine and analyze forensic evidence by more than 5%. Four experiments were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the concept mapping case domain modeling approach. Analysis of the experiments supports the hypothesis that the concept mapping case domain modeling approach can be used to organize, search, identify, and analyze digital evidence in an examination.

The right to information privacy is considered a basic human right in countries that recognise the right to privacy. South Africa, and other countries that recognise this right, offer individuals legal protections for their information privacy. Individuals, organisations and even governments in these countries often have an obligation under such laws to protect information privacy. Large organisations, for example, multinational companies and government departments are of special concern when it comes to protecting information privacy as they often hold substantial amounts of information about many individuals. The protection of information privacy, therefore, has become ever more significant as technological advances enable information privacy to be breached with increasing ease. There is, however, little research on holistic approaches to protecting information privacy in large organisations. Holistic approaches take account of both technical and non-technical factors that affect information privacy. Nontechnical factors may include the management of information privacy protection measures and other factors such as manual business processes and organisational policies. Amongst the protections that can be used by large organisations to protect information privacy is the ability to investigate incidents involving information privacy. Since large organisations typically make extensive use of information technology to store or process information, such investigations are likely to involve digital forensics. Digital forensic investigations require a certain amount of preparedness or readiness for investigations to be executed in an optimal fashion. The available literature on digital forensics and digital forensic readiness (DFR), unfortunately, does not specifically deal with the protection of information privacy, which has requirements over and above typical digital forensic investigations that are more concerned with information security breaches. The aim of this thesis, therefore, is to address the lack of research into DFR with regard to information privacy incidents. It adopts a holistic approach to DFR since many of the necessary measures are non-technical. There is, thus, an increased focus on management as opposed to specific technical issues. In addressing the lack of research into information privacy-specific DFR, the thesis provides large organisations with knowledge to better conduct digital forensic investigations into information privacy incidents. Hence, it allows for increased information privacy protection in large organisations because investigations may reveal the causes of information privacy breaches. Such breaches may then be prevented in future. The ability to conduct effective investigations also has a deterrent effect that may dissuade attempts at breaching information privacy. This thesis addresses the lack of research into information privacy-specific DFR by presenting a framework that allows large organisations to develop a digital forensic readiness capability for information privacy incidents. The framework is an idealistic representation of measures that can be taken to develop such a capability. In reality, large organisations operate within cost constraints. We therefore also contribute by showing how a cost management methodology known as time-driven activity-based costing can be used to determine the cost of DFR measures. Organisations are then able to make cost versus risk decisions when deciding which measures in the framework they wish to implement. Lastly, we introduce the concept of a digital forensics management system. The management of DFR in a large organisation can be a difficult task prone to error as it involves coordinating resources across multiple departments and organisational functions. The concept of the digital forensics management system proposed here allows management to better manage DFR by providing a central system from which information is available and control is possible. We develop an architecture for such a system and validate the architecture through a proof-of-concept prototype. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Computer Science / unrestricted

A review of digital forensics today shows that it could be exposed to threats jeopardizing the digital evidence integrity. There are several techniques to countermeasure this risk, one of which is the method that involves the use of blockchains. Blockchains use an advanced system to keep the data within it persistent and transparent, which makes it a natural candidate for everything integrity-sensitive. Several blockchain techniques and infrastructures have been described in this study, based on previous studies and other literature work. Interviews and experiments made a comparison between traditional digital forensic methodologies versus blockchains possible in later chapters. The results showed that blockchains could be the answer to securing digital evidence integrity. However, there is still a lot more work to be done before blockchains are ready to be implemented in production systems. The results of the blockchain analysis are presented such that they can be used as an aid to further research, either theoretically or practically, digital evidence blockchains.

Magister Commercii (Information Management) - MCom(IM) / The purpose of the study described in this thesis was to investigate the structure required to implement and manage digital forensic readiness within an enterprise. A comparative analysis of different digital forensic readiness frameworks was performed and, based on the findings of the analysis, the digital forensic readiness commonalities framework (DFRCF) was extended. The resultant structure was used to design a digital forensic readiness maturity assessment model (DFRMAM) that will enable organisations to assess their forensic readiness. In conclusion, both the extended DFRCF and the DFRMAM are shown to be validated by forensic practitioners, using semi-structured interviews. A qualitative research design and methodology was used to perform a comparative analysis of the various digital forensic readiness frameworks, to comprehend the underlying structures. All the participant responses were recorded and transcribed. Analysis of the findings resulting from the study showed that participants mostly agreed with the structure of the extended DFRCF; however, key changes were introduced to the extended DFRCF. The participants also validated the DFRMAM, and the majority of respondents opted for a checklist-type MAM. Digital forensic readiness is a very sensitive topic since organisations fear that their information might be made public and, as a result, increase their exposure to forensic incidents and reputational risk. Because of this, it was difficult to find participants who have a forensic footprint and are willing, able, and knowledgeable about digital forensic readiness. This study will contribute to the body of knowledge by presenting an original, validated DFRCF and DFRMAM. Practitioners and organisations now have access to non-proprietary DFRMAM.

Dans les affaires judiciaires, les juges confrontés à des questions d’ordre techniques en matière informatique, recourent à des experts qui mettent leur savoir-faire au service de la justice. Régulièrement mandatés par les tribunaux, ils ont pour mission d'éclairer le juge en apportant des éléments de preuve utiles à l'enquête.Ils recherchent dans les scellés informatiques les éléments relatifs aux faits incriminés en préservant l’intégrité des données et évitant toute altération des supports originaux. Les éléments de preuve ainsi recueillis sont analysés par l’expert qui déposera ses conclusions au magistrat sous forme d’un rapport d'expertise.les investigations techniques sont effectuées à l'aide des outils très sophistiqués qui permettent de prendre connaissance des informations présentes, effacées, cachées ou chiffrées dans les supports numériques examinés.Ce qui requiert une parfaite maîtrise du matériel déployé et une identification claire des bonnes pratiques de la discipline. Ce projet de recherches vise à mettre en exergue les défis techniques aux quels sont confrontés les experts, la complexité des outils utilisés dans le cadre des investigations techniques et l'importance de la mise en place des tests de validation qui permettent de connaître les capacités et limites de chaque outil. / In criminal cases, judges confronted with questions of technical order in computer technology, designate expert witnesses who put their expertise at the service of justice. Duly appointed by the courts, they help the judge by providing evidence relevant to the investigation.They search the suspect’s seized digital devices for elements of computer related crime, while preserving the integrity of the data and avoiding any alteration of the original media.The evidence thus collected is analyzed by a digital forensic expert who will document their findings to the judge in a report.Technical investigations are conducted by using powerful and sophisticated tools to find the current files and recover deleted, hidden or encrypted data from the digital media device examined.This requires perfect control of the utilized equipment and a clear identification of the methods used during the analysis. This research project aims to highlight the technical challenges which experts face, the complexity of digital forensic tools used for technical investigations, and the importance of their validation to understand the capabilities and limitations of each tool.

The area of digital forensics might be old but the idea that criminals or other organisations are actively working to hide their steps is somewhat new. Roughly a year ago, a company announced that they can actively exploit security flaws in a popular digital forensics suite, thus raising questions of validity of evidence submitted to court. It is not known if this exploit is being used in the wild but the mere thought of security issues existing in tools is a serious issue for law enforcement. This paper sets out to clarify the digital forensic process, what tools are used within the digital forensic process and what anti-forensic techniques are available on the market. Using the digital forensic process as a base, this paper produces a model that classifies anti-forensic techniques into realms and shows which realm affects which stage of the digital forensics process. The digital forensic process, anti-forensic techniques and the model was then tested in a Delphi-inspired study where questions regarding the digital forensic process and anti- forensic techniques was asked to digital forensic specialists as well as information security specialists. The goal of the Delphi-study was to reach a consensus regarding the foundations (process and techniques) and their internal relationships (as described in the model). The first part of this paper’s conclusion is that a digital forensic process should contain the following stages: Planning -> Identification -> Acquisition -> Analysis -> Presentation. The paper also concludes that there are several digital forensic tools available for a practitioner, both open and closed source, and that the practitioner uses a mixture of the two. Apart from the process and the tools used, this paper concludes that there are several anti-forensic techniques available on the market and that these could be used by any malicious user that actively want to disrupt the digital forensic process. A second conclusion is that the proposed model connects the stages of the digital forensic process with anti-forensic techniques though the use of realms. The proposed model can be used to develop anti-anti-forensics methods, processes or techniques.