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Why You Should Hire a DF Professional for Criminal Cases

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RolfGutmann
(@rolfgutmann)
Posts: 1185
Noble Member
 

A little bit of training is for nothing. It has to be your true love.

 
Posted : 02/01/2018 10:05 pm
keydet89
(@keydet89)
Posts: 3568
Famed Member
 

The question is how you find a top DF Professional?

And ordinary people cannot afford a top expert.

How do you know?

I don't consider myself a top DF professional, but I've done pro bono work in several instances. Some was pretty straight-forward…recover files from a hard drive of a system that would no longer boot.

In another instance I did pro bono work for a court case, and my report was used to get charges dismissed.

Some people don't need a 'top expert', they just need the work done accurately.

 
Posted : 02/01/2018 10:35 pm
keydet89
(@keydet89)
Posts: 3568
Famed Member
 

There's also a tendency to assign people to the computer investigations unit with no regard for their technical skills.

I've seen that, as well. I used to teach a course when I worked for a company in Reston, VA, and two seats in the intro course were given to detectives in a nearby LE jurisdiction. One showed up, and had no idea how to open a command prompt. He made the mistake of closing the prompt when he thought we were done, and had to be shown how to do it again. It wasn't that he couldn't learn, it was just so outside of his familiarity.

But, at the same time, I've seen the same thing with folks assigned to performing exams in the private sector, as well. I've also seen a great deal where some really smart folks would be sent to a training event, only to spend all of their time on email, slack, or some other form of social media, and neither pick up nor contribute anything.

Side question How long do you think it would take, on average, to develop an interested person with minimal tech skills into a competent examiner?

It depends…how "interested" are they, and what is considered "competent"? I would think that if you were to say, starting with Windows 7 or Windows 10, you could turn someone who's interested into a competent examiner on that platform (not including specific applications) in a week of dedicated effort.

 
Posted : 02/01/2018 10:42 pm
(@randomaccess)
Posts: 385
Reputable Member
 

I don't consider myself a top DF professional

Off topic, but I respectfully disagree (not with your opinion of yourself, that can be whatever you want, but that you are not a top DF professional is what I disagree with)

 
Posted : 03/01/2018 7:48 am
(@randomaccess)
Posts: 385
Reputable Member
 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/01/02/man-convicted-rape-freed-after-sister-law-finds-deleted-facebook-messages-prove-his-innocence/995197001/

strange case….only from a perspective of things dont really add up to me

The investigator probably should have gotten the other side of the conversation as well; not sure of the jurisdictional issues but since they apparently had the credentials, they may have been able to get permission from the owner or the court to use them.

But excusing that, the accused would have received the brief of evidence from the prosecution and seen the facebook messages being used against him. He would have been able to see the conversation and say "wait..that didn't happen that way".

He didn't delete the messages on his account…so they would have been on his facebook account still? I just did a quick test and deleted my sent messages from one account, and they still appeared on the other.

Just odd that he didn't present his side

 
Posted : 03/01/2018 8:04 am
minime2k9
(@minime2k9)
Posts: 481
Honorable Member
 

I think part of the problem, both in the UK and the US, is that many forces still believe that Officers should be the primary digital investigation team.

Although I agree with developing links with external contractors and companies to provide external assistance, this should usually be used for cases where the expertise does not exist in house. A good example would be hardware repair of an important hard disk. The ultimate problem with having the majority of your digital investigation team externally is the lack of control you have over the quality and the bureaucracy involved in tender processes which never actually ascertain how good a company is.

For digital investigation teams you need technical experience and investigative capability in about equal measures. As such some officers you can train to do learn the technical skills but a lot of the time its easier to take technical people not just from Digital investigations degrees but also network admins, programmers and others and help them with the investigation/legal side.

The idea of front line officers all being trained to the correct level to do even basic examination of digital devices is the brain child of police forces who no longer have the resources to do the job properly so try and bodge a fix.

 
Posted : 03/01/2018 8:28 am
RolfGutmann
(@rolfgutmann)
Posts: 1185
Noble Member
 

Just follow the rule 'Best People on the Frontline'. But good people become seniors and move their office to the next upper floor. TotalLoss. We internally only put the Junior-Senior as twins on the frontline. No Junior self-running.

 
Posted : 03/01/2018 8:52 am
jaclaz
(@jaclaz)
Posts: 5133
Illustrious Member
 

@randomaccess

The originally linked to article is on USAtoday and it is clearly a re-post.

Read the (BTW cited n the USA today article) supposed "original"
http//www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5223567/Man-rape-conviction-quashed-police-blunder.html

Besides (what I already cited in my previous post)

From the outset, he insisted Facebook messages would demonstrate his innocence. He remained calm, believing common sense would prevail. Instead, he was charged and released on bail.

‘I had complete trust in the legal system at the time so thought I had nothing to worry about,’ said Mr Kay. For the next year, buoyed by friends and family, he was convinced his innocence would be established in court. When the week-long trial began, the prosecution presented Facebook messages to the jury as evidence of Mr Kay’s guilt. ‘My jaw dropped. I said to the prosecutor that there were other messages, that the conversations weren’t complete,’ he said. ‘But he got angrier and louder and kept saying, “I put it to you that you raped this girl and now you’re lying to this court.” ’

jaclaz

 
Posted : 03/01/2018 1:16 pm
MDCR
 MDCR
(@mdcr)
Posts: 376
Reputable Member
 

The police have to deal with a wide range of cases and although technology plays a big part in a lot of cases now, expecting them to be experts in all technology is unrealistic.

That is why you put civilian experts on expert positions and keep the suits and uniforms away until they can prove that they know what they are doing.

The situation in green-uniform agencies isn't much better, officers think that Cyber ops is like tracking down who is shooting missiles and then just firing back. They don't even have a basic understanding of spoofing and attacking via proxies (victims, not proxy servers) or anonymity services like Tor, they think compliance and generating infosec papers is more important than operational DFIR and actually stopping attacks… and they wonder why skilled people leave.

 
Posted : 03/01/2018 1:34 pm
KungFuAction
(@kungfuaction)
Posts: 109
Estimable Member
Topic starter
 

The question is how you find a top DF Professional?

And ordinary people cannot afford a top expert.

If money is standing in the way of proving your innocence, you bet your last dollar that I'm going to take out a loan or sell everything that I have. Honestly, DF services don't cost that much relatively speaking. The cases I've been hired for, it's usually less than $5,000.

 
Posted : 03/01/2018 2:08 pm
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