Digital evidence is the collective term used to describe information or materials stored or transmitted in digital form that is to be tendered as an exhibit in a court of law. The past few decades have seen an explosion in the use of technology in all walks of life and industry. From email to automated control systems for water supplies, information systems and technology underpin our modern society. Perhaps unsurprisingly, criminals have moved with the times, finding means by which to leverage technology in the commission or support of offences.
The material in this article is heavily based on RFC 3227
Some principles of handling digital evidence:
- Custodianship; guaranteeing a chain of custody
- Unauthorized disclosure; Digital evidence is often sensitive also in certain cases it requires qualified persons to access digital evidence
- Alteration; Make sure no change of data while handling of the data, note that with very volatile data this often means after acquisition and due to failure of storage media this it is not always possible to guarantee.
The methods used to collect evidence should be transparent and reproducible. You should be prepared to reproduce precisely the methods you used, and have those methods tested by independent experts.
Order of Volatility
When collecting evidence you should proceed from the volatile to the less volatile. Here is an example order of volatility for a typical system.
- registers, cache
- routing table, ARP cache, process table, kernel statistics, memory
- temporary file systems
- remote logging and monitoring data that is relevant to the system in question
- physical configuration, network topology
- archival media
Chain of custody
You should be able to clearly describe how the evidence was found, how it was handled and everything that happened to it.
The following need to be documented:
- Where, when, and by whom was the evidence discovered and collected.
- Where, when and by whom was the evidence handled or examined.
- Who had custody of the evidence, during what period. How was it stored.
- When the evidence changed custody, when and how did the transfer occur (include shipping numbers, etc.).
Types of reconstruction:
- Relational - how one finding is related to another: Correlation
- Functional - how one finding can be used/applied
- Temporal - events related to the timeline
Evidentiary standards of proof
Computer evidence needs to be:
- Admissible: It must conform to certain legal rules before it can be put before a court.
- Authentic: It must be possible to positively tie evidentiary material to the incident.
- Complete: It must tell the whole story and not just a particular perspective.
- Reliable: There must be nothing about how the evidence was collected and subsequently handled that casts doubt about its authenticity and veracity.
- Believable: It must be readily believable and understandable by a court.
- Principles of Evidence - Fifth edition, by Irving Younger, Michael Goldsmith, David A. Sonenshein, 2011
- Wikipedia: Thesis, antithesis, synthesis
- Wikipedia: Reasoning - Logical reasoning methods and argumentation
- Wikipedia: Deductive reasoning
- Wikipedia: Inductive reasoning
- Wikipedia: Five Ws
Standards and best practices
- IETF RFC 3227, Guidelines for evidence collection and archiving, by The Internet Society, 2002
- ACPO Good Practice Guide for Digital Evidence, by ACPO, 2012
- ISO/IEC 27037:2012 - Information technology -- Security techniques -- Guidelines for identification, collection, acquisition and preservation of digital evidence, by International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
- ISO/IEC DIS 27041 - Information technology -- Security techniques -- Guidance on assuring suitability and adequacy of incident investigative methods, by International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
- ISO/IEC DIS 27042 - Information technology -- Security techniques -- Guidelines for the analysis and interpretation of digital evidence, by International Organization for Standardization (ISO)