“I do not think that word means what you think it means” – Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride As with any other scientific specialty, computer investigations have their own lexicon of ideas and terms. Many of them are foreign enough that a layman will require an explanation just to understand them, but several are words with …
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We have all heard the words: “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” But what does that mean today? Drug companies write thousands of pages of disclaimers, and public servants lie about extramarital affairs all the time. So what is “the truth”? I recently had a case …
A little understanding of electronic evidence and digital forensics goes a long way. Because there are some terms of art that mean one thing to a forensic investigator and another to a layperson, it is important that you familiarize yourself with a bit of the lexicon before engaging a digital forensics firm. This primer will …
We recently received a hard drive turned over by a former employee of our client. The drive would not work and had been sent in for data recovery. Indeed, when we brought it into the lab, the drive was not powering on. It was time to do a little investigation. Examining the drive connectors, we …
They say you always remember your first one. The deceased was brought into the lab and laid out on a cold, hard table. Instruments were laid out on the table beside them, some eerily familiar and others strange and arcane. In a few moments, we were inside, looking at the innards that held the secrets …
The professions of medicine and law are somewhat similar: they are expensive, often painful and we hope we feel better when the procedure is over than we did when we started. Suppose one day you went to the dentist for a filling and while you were there, you mentioned that you were scheduled for heart …
There is a tendency in the electronic evidence field to lose sight of the fact that, although the battleground is different, the way the war is fought is the same. Electronic discovery motions are still discovery motions, destruction of electronic evidence is still spoliation and computer forensicinvestigations are still investigations. Because of the jargon in the …
Recently, we received a hard drive for investigation as part of litigation. This drive had come from the work computer of an employee terminated by our client six months prior, now the subject of the litigation. When we received the drive, it was apparent that it had been tampered with. Hard drives typically come with stickers …
Many people have seen advertisements on the internet offering software that will let you monitor activity on a computer. These ads bark “Catch a Cheating Spouse” or “Secretly Monitor Email” or “Spy on Your Computer.” In many circumstances, this type of software is not only sneaky, it’s criminal. Common Features There are many different types …
Technology follows a predictable path as it develops. New technologies are developed to address a small, but specific criteria. Over time, the user-friendliness of the technology increases, leading to adoption by a larger portion of the userbase. Eventually, the technology is easy enough to use that nearly everyone is a user. Email is an example of a technology …