Forensic Focus

Rick Ayers doesn’t look much like the geek he says he has always been. A former golfer and rock guitarist, six feet tall, with a weight lifter’s build, long hair and a soul patch, Mr. Ayers, 37, stands out in

A gangster senses that the police are behind him and he could be caught any time. To save his established network of goons and even high-profile people, he extracts the Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) of his mobile phone and chews

True story: The Orlando (Fla.) Police Department is taking a homicide suspect to trial. The bad guy’s cell phone is being held as evidence. Apply sophisticated software to reconstruct deleted files and — what have we here? We see the

Voom Technologies (www.voomtech.com) has released HardCopy 3 (HC3), a faster, upgraded and enriched version of their renowned HardCopy 2 computer forensics hard-drive duplicator. HC3 offers data transfer speeds of up to 7.5 GB/min., eclipsing Voom’s own HardCopy 2. The HC3

2008 has been a year of growth in malware, infections, botnets and criminal profits. Recently, some security experts called for the punishment of these criminal activities. Criminal activity for financial gain remains the driver for the massive increase in Internet

A spike in UK-based cyber crime has prompted the British Computer Society (BCS) to form a new specialist group in the fight against online fraud. The BCS Cybercrime Forensics Specialist Group will gather and interpret digital evidence for investigations, as

Cybercriminals operating worldwide are benefitting from ineffective law enforcement and a growing economic recession that could make jittery people more susceptible to cybercrime scams. So concludes security firm McAfee in its new report, “Virtual Criminology Report—Cybercrime vs. Cyberlaw.” published Tuesday.

Firms should put in place forensics plans for incidents that may require computer evidence to be handed over, according to an influential security body. The Information Assurance Advisory Council (IAAC) published a report on Tuesday that aims to provide organisations

PmExplorer is a forensic software tool for the review and examination of PM files for Nokia mobile telephones. PM files can be obtained with third party hardware and software utilities such as sarasoft and the SHU box. PmExplorer differs from

The Julie Amero case has stirred up a lot of emotions, including some from Cringe readers who feel I was less than fair in my description of the expert witness hired by Amero’s attorney, Herb Horner. You know what? They’re

On November 4th, Guidance Software announced that on October 6th it had received a $4.50 per share takeover proposal from AccessData Corp. of Linden, Utah. The company subsequently rejected the offer. This is another sign of confidence that management believes

Amateur photographer, and now an expert in gathering hi-tech information, FBI Special Agent Jim Talley uses both passions to make a case. “Hopefully, I’m protecting my neighbors, my friends and my community. I would say that is my personal satisfaction

Forensic examination lays bare a user’s computer activity. Personal, confidential and privileged communications, sexual misadventure, financial and medical record keeping, proprietary business data and other sensitive information are all exposed. In the white-picket-fenced places where active data lives, you can

Accused of letting impressionable students see pornographic pictures as she browsed the web in her classroom, former Connecticut school teacher Julie Amero dodged felony charges last Friday by agreeing to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge and surrendering her

These days, virtually every major criminal activity leaves evidence — images, text messages, call records and more — on mobile devices. Yet for the investigator who knows only the basics or less about how to recover this evidence, building a

I recently had a look at the most recent CSI security survey. While a lot of things have changed over the past year, one thing is definitely consistent: attacks happen. At one point, attacks on companies were as high as