Digital Forensics Tools & Techniques

Abstract

Impact of the digital forensic in dispensing justice cannot be disputed considering the number of the cases that have successfully been determined using forensic evidences and other cases still pending on the court and forensic evidence analysis is on the progress with greater expectation that evidence will be substantial to meet necessary threshold of the justice to be used in the convictions.

The era of the digital forensic investigation can be traced from 1778 from the discovery made that each individual has unique fingerprints. Further advancement was made on this area and it was legally recognized that in 1882 that science of the fingerprints may be applied. The journey of the digital forensic discovery continued in 1888, photographs of the serial killer commonly known as Jack Ripper were analyzed using forensic science. At the beginning of the 1900s, various methods of digital forensics were discovered which great achievement was in forensic science. Additionally, the forensic investigation was widened from the use of the fingerprints to hair and also blood.

There are other advancements which have been made over time which pertain to the documentation of the digital evidence, forgery and also ballistic methods. In 1924, the first laboratory for digital forensic investigation was built in the U.S and in particular, in New Mexico. Other advancement made include identification of the residual of the firearms in 1960, formulation of the regulations which acknowledged the use of the digital forensic evidence in the U.S.A. Additionally, more advanced methods and tools for the digital forensic investigation have been developed and also the scope of the allocation has widened and currently it is used extensively in many areas not only to the human beings but even to the objects which are not human beings.

Forensic tools and techniques differ depending on the nature of the information that wants to be collected. Some of the common tools used include: Encase which is bussed to retrieve files which were downloaded on the websites but were eventually deleted, MADIANT and Web Historian which retrieve Cookie history and any other type of web history, DFT, Evidor used in retrieving data that has been deleted, Visual Time Analyzer that track all the computer activities and the list of the forensic tools continues.

Having forensic tools is not enough but the question which is important is where these tools will be applied. In the process of the collecting information some of the digital forensic investigation to collect evidence include; email forensics, network forensics, computer devices and operating systems, photographs and many other areas which unravel information on the field of the medicine, accounting and also entire forensic science.

There numerous cases that have were committed either assault, robbery with violence, homicide, rape and burglary and also other crimes on the systems where eyewitnesses could not be identified and in other cases, those who were available, they were either killed and others threatened by the culprits and fear providing any evidence to the investigative agencies because they fear for their lives. However, through the use of the digital forensic investigation, some strides have been made in some cases where culprits have been identified and with digital forensic evidence, they have been perpetrator have been convicted.

Some of the cases convicted successfully include: Colin Pitchfork in 1987 for two local rape-murder cases where DNA evidence was used, Michelle convicted for killing her husband where evidence was obtained from the email messages and chats, James Kent convicted where evidence was obtained from use of the Encase software and James Cameroon whose yahoo account was examined and found guilty of child pornography.