Cloud computing is gaining acceptance and also increasing in
popularity. Organisations often rely on cloud resources as an
effective replacement for their `in-house' computer systems. In the
cloud, virtual resources are provided from a larger pool of resources,
these resources being available to multiple different clients.
When something suspicious happens within a digital environment, a
digital forensic investigation may be conducted to gather information
about the event. When conducting such an investigation digital
forensic procedures are followed. These procedures involve the steps
to be followed to aid in the successful completion of the
investigation. One of the possible steps that may be followed involves
isolating possible evidence in order to protect it from contamination
and tampering.
Clouds may provide a multi-tenancy solution across multiple
geographical locations. When conducting an investigation into physical
equipment the equipment may be isolated. This may be done, for
example, by placing a cell phone in a Faraday bag in order to block
signals or unplugging a computer's network cable to stop the computer
from either sending or receiving of network traffic. However, in the
cloud it may not be applicable to isolate the equipment of the cloud
because of the multi-tenancy and geographically separated nature of
the cloud. There is currently little research available on how
isolation can be accomplished inside the cloud environment.
This dissertation aims at addressing the need for isolation on the
cloud by creating new methods and techniques that may be incorporated
into an investigation in order to isolate cloud resources. Isolation
can be achieved by moving the unnecessary evidence to a different
location and retaining the required evidence or by moving the required
evidence in such a manner that the evidence would not be contaminated.
If isolated evidence were to be moved to a digital forensic
laboratory, the question arises as to whether it would be possible to
create such a laboratory on the cloud utilise the benefits of cloud
computing and enable the investigation to be conducted on the cloud
without moving the isolated evidence from the cloud. The dissertation
will develop various models of isolation. These models are then tested
in experimental conditions. The experiments were conducted on Nimbula
Director 1.0.3 and VMware vSphere 5.0.
The models were successfully applied in the experiments. It was found
that investigations could benefit from the use of the proposed models
for isolation. However, the experiments also highlighted that some of
the models are not applicable or that a combination should be used.
The experiments also indicated that the methods to be used would
depend on the circumstances of the investigation. A preliminary "cloud
laboratory" was designed and described in terms of which a digital
forensic laboratory can be created on the cloud resources, thus
enabling an investigation to be conducted inside the cloud
environment. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Computer Science / unrestricted
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:up/oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/33490 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Delport, Waldo |
| Contributors | Olivier, Martin S., wdelport@cs.up.ac.za |
| Publisher | University of Pretoria |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Rights | © 2013 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. |
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