In a recent case an opposing expert actually testified that computer forensics was born with EnCase in 2000. I know differently, but it led me to poking around about the topic. I have seen references to early work by the US army in the 70's on mainframes, but nothing specific. I've also seen references to the FBI's CART starting in 1984. Anyone else have some good and/or specific nuggets (even personal stories) regarding early computer forensic endeavors?
I am sure you will get better information than I can give but I started in 1997 with a UK product called Vogon - and that was with their version 3!
It will be interesting to follow this thread.
regards
I think I remember Bill Thompson speaking about Vogon in some of my EnCase training. Did they used to be the best until EnCase came along? or did they buy them out?
oh and OT but…
http//
I suppose it comes down to how you are defining 'forensics' in this context.
Certainly the FBI Magnetic Media Program (1984 - eventually became CART) seems to be the first organised attempt at dealing with the issue - they dealt with a whole three cases in their first year! [
I'd strongly suggest reading "The Cuckoo's Egg" by Clifford Stoll. In the early '90s, he was hooking up dot matrix printers to incoming lines, using them as a crude "sniffer" before there was such a thing. Definitely worth the read…
Dr Sollys was doing forensics for some big players in at least 1993.
The software developed for this eventually became the Vogon Forensic Suite (lovely box) following the merger of the company that the DR side of Dr Sollys became (Authentec).
Encase came later.
IRS and the (now) Canada Revenue Agency started group training in late 1990 but both had a few people on the ground in around '87.
A crude sniffer I would put more towards network analysis and not computer forensics. I'd lean more towards something like Norton Utilities, Disk Doctor, early Norton.
I'd strongly suggest reading "The Cuckoo's Egg" by Clifford Stoll. In the early '90s, he was hooking up dot matrix printers to incoming lines, using them as a crude "sniffer" before there was such a thing. Definitely worth the read…
Well, it's not even plausible that Mr. Encase wink one day came out with
LET the Computer Forensics Science BE!
Maybe Wikipedia is not always the most reliable source in the world, but still
http//
Connected
http//
http//
http//
jaclaz
I'd say that the testimony discussed in the OP is at least a decade off.
IACIS was formed in '90 and was doing the DPC certification that year. However the founders of IACIS met at a SCERS training event run by FLECT, so Computer Forensics definitely pre-dates '90. I'm not certain when FLECT started offering SCERS.
http//
http//