Computer Forensics and Cloud Computing

I can’t get excited about this term the cloud because as long as we have had networks we have had the cloud, even grandma with a Gmail account can be classed as “in the cloud” but I suspect she will be as unimpressed with the name as I am. Saving your data or holding your data on remote servers is nothing new.

From a Forensic Computing standpoint until there is full hosted desktop solutions available and more importantly used by more people nothing much will change. Forensic tools will still track user activity via Internet Explorer and your username and password to your hosted accounts will still be available to a determined investigator. At HD Forensics http://www.hdforensics.co.uk we have been addressing the issue of online storage for a long time and tools such as NA have great filters to help the investigator find links to online storage. The writer of NA or Netanalysis is Mr Craig Wilson and without his product my investigations would take twice the time.

MC Ware http://www.mcware.co.uk expect the take up of online desktop products from vmware and citrix to increase by 25% in 2010 for our customer base.

Computer Expert Witness

Earlier in the year we dealt with a major case for the defence that dealt with the dreaded virus defence. The computer was riddled with malware and the main culprit was a DNS changer that was pointing this guys searches all over the place.
We were able to demonstrate using Liveview and VMWARE exactly how his browser was behaving and with a little help from Sunbelt in the US (morale support during a tough time) we found the smoking gun.
The Virus Defence has been successful very few times and in fact I was only able to find one other case. All readers of this blog must beware how images can end up in temporary internet files without your knowing. If you have saved them, previewed then or even put them on CD then you should pack your toothbrush and get ready for a stay at her majesties pleasure.
If you are under investigation at work or as part of a criminal investigation and you believe that malware or viruses are to blame for files found on your computer then contact http://www.hdforensics.co.uk or http://www.mcware.co.uk