Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

21-34

Authors: Yui Sakurai, Yuki Ashino, Tetsutaro Uehara, Hiroshi Yoshiura, Ryoichi Sasaki

These days, most data is digitized and processed in various ways by computers. In the past, computer owners were free to process data as desired and to observe the inputted data as well as the interim results. However, the unrestricted processing of data and accessing of interim results even by computer users is associated with an increasing number of adverse events. These adverse events often occur when sensitive data such as personal or confidential business information must be handled by two or more parties, such as in the case of e-Discovery, used in legal proceedings, or epidemiologic studies. To solve this problem, providers encrypt data, and the owner of the computer performs decoding in the memory for encrypted data. The computer owner can be limited to performing only certain processing of data and to observing only the final results. As an implementation that uses existing technology to realize this solution, the processing of data contained in a smart card was considered, but such an implementation would not be practical due to issues related to computer capacity and processing speed. Accordingly, the authors present the concept of PC-based High Grade Anti-Tamper Equipment (HiGATE), which allows data to be handled without revealing the data content to administrators or users. To verify this concept, an e-Discovery application on a prototype was executed and the results are reported here.

45-62

Authors: Luciana Duranti, Barbara Endicott-Popovsky

This paper introduces the Digital Records Forensics project, a research endeavour located at the University of British Columbia in Canada and aimed at the development of a new science resulting from the integration of digital forensics with diplomatics, archival science, information science and the law of evidence, and of an interdisciplinary graduate degree program, called Digital Records Forensics Studies, directed to professionals working for law enforcement agencies, legal firms, courts, and all kind of institutions and business that require their services. The program anticipates the need for organizations to become “forensically ready,” defined by John Tan as “maximizing the ability of an environment to collect credible digital evidence while minimizing the cost of an incident response (Tan, 2001).” The paper argues the need for such a program, describes its nature and content, and proposes ways of delivering it.

85-88

Authors: Gary Kessler

Cohen, F. (2010). Digital Forensic Evidence Examination (2nd ed.). Livermore, CA: ASP Press. 452 pages, ISBN: 978-1-878109-45-3, US$79. Reviewed by Gary C. Kessler, Gary Kessler Associates & Edith Cowan University (gck@garykessler.net) On the day that I sat down to start to write this review, the following e-mail came across on one of my lists: Person A and Person B write back and forth and create an email thread. Person A then forwards the email to Person C, but changes some wording in the email exchange between A & B. What is the easiest way (and is it even possible) to find out when that earlier email message was altered before sent to Person C? Before you try to answer these questions, read Fred Cohen's Digital Forensic Evidence Examination. His book won't actually tell you how to answer these questions but it will help you understand the difficulty in even trying to answer them with any level of certainty.