Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

5-32

Authors: Graeme Baxter Bell, Richard Boddington

Digital evidence is increasingly relied upon in computer forensic examinations and legal proceedings in the modern courtroom. The primary storage technology used for digital information has remained constant over the last two decades, in the form of the magnetic disc. Consequently, investigative, forensic, and judicial procedures are well-established for magnetic disc storage devices (Carrier, 2005). However, a paradigm shift has taken place in technology storage and complex, transistor-based devices for primary storage are now increasingly common. Most people are aware of the transition from portable magnetic floppy discs to portable USB transistor flash devices, yet the transition from magnetic hard drives to solid-state drives inside modern computers has so far attracted very little attention from the research community. Here we show that it is imprudent and potentially reckless to rely on existing evidence collection processes and procedures, and we demonstrate that conventional assumptions about the behaviour of storage media are no longer valid. In particular we demonstrate that modern storage devices can operate under their own volition in the absence of computer instructions. Such operations are highly destructive of traditionally recoverable data. This can contaminate evidence; can obfuscate and make validation of digital evidence reports difficult; can complicate the process of live and dead analysis recovery; and can complicate and frustrate the post recovery forensic analysis. Our experimental findings demonstrate that solid-state drives (SSDs) have the capacity to destroy evidence catastrophically under their own volition, in the absence of specific instructions to do so from a computer.

57-72

Authors: Sameera Mubarak

The integrity of lawyers trust accounts has come under scrutiny in the last few years. There are strong possibilities of information technology security breaches happening within the firms, either accidental or deliberate. The damage caused by these security breaches could be extreme. For example, a trust account fund in an Australian law firm was misused in a security breach in which Telstra charged. A $50,000 for phone usage, mainly for ISD calls to Hong Kong. Our study involved interviewing principles of ten law companies to find out solicitors attitudes to computer security and the possibility of breaches of their trust accounts. We simultaneously carried out a survey to see if the trends identified in our case-studies could be backed up with broader quantitative data. We have also conducted in-depth interviews of 5 trust account regulators from the Law society of South Australia to know their view points on security threats on trust accounts. An overall finding highlights that law firms were not current with technology to combat computer crime, and inadequate access control was a major concern in safeguarding account data. Our conclusions revealed the urgent need for law firms to adopt security controls, implement information security policies and procedures and obtain cooperation from management to communicate these policies to staff.