As new reports come to light and digital news agencies show cybercrime on the increase , it’s clear that cybercrime investigation plays a critical role keep the web safe. Traditional enforcement government agencies are now called upon to research not only real-world crimes, but also crimes on the web . Many well-known federal agencies even publish and update the “most wanted” list of cyber criminals, within the same way we’ve seen traditional criminals listed and publicized for years.
That’s why today we’ll answer the question, “What may be a cybercrime investigation?” and explore the tools and techniques employed by public and personal cybercrime investigation agencies to affect differing types of cybercrime.
What is a cybercrime investigation?
Before jumping into the “investigation” part, let’s return to the basics: a digital crime or cybercrime may be a crime that involves the usage of a computer, phone or the other digital device connected to a network.
These electronic devices are often used for 2 things: perform the cybercrime (that is, launch a cyber attack), or act because the victim, by receiving the attack from other malicious sources.
Therefore, a cybercrime investigation is that the process of investigating, analyzing and recovering critical forensic digital data from the networks involved within the attack this might be the web and/or an area network—in order to spot the authors of the digital crime and their true intentions.
Cybercrime investigators must be experts in computing , understanding not only software, file systems and operating systems, but also how networks and hardware work. they need to be knowledgeable enough to work out how the interactions between these components occur, to urge a full picture of what happened, why it happened, when it happened, who performed the cybercrime itself, and the way victims can protect themselves within the future against these sorts of cyber threats.
Who conducts cybercrime investigation?
Criminal justice agencies
Criminal justice agencies are the operations behind cybercrime prevention campaigns and therefore the investigation, monitoring and prosecution of digital criminals. counting on your country of residence, a criminal justice agency will handle all cases associated with cybercrime.
For example, in the U.S. and counting on the case, a cybercrime are often investigated by the FBI, U.S. United States Secret Service , Internet Crime Complaint Center, U.S. Postal Inspection Service or the Federal Trade Commission.
In other countries like Spain, the national police and therefore the civil guard lookout of the whole process, regardless of what sort of cybercrime is being investigated.
National security agencies
This also changes from one country to a different , but generally , this sort of agency usually investigates cybercrime directly associated with the agency.
For example, an intelligence should be responsible of investigating cybercrimes that have some connection to their organization, like against its networks, employees or data; or are performed by intelligence actors.
In the U.S., another exemplar is that the military, which runs its own cybercrime investigations by using trained internal staff rather than counting on federal agencies.
Private security agencies
Private security agencies also are important within the fight against cybercrime, especially during the investigation process. While governments and national agencies run their own networks, servers and applications, they create up only a little fraction of the immense infrastructure and code kept running by private companies, projects, organizations and individuals round the world.
With this in mind, it’s no surprise that non-public cybersecurity experts, research companies and blue teams play a critical role when it involves preventing, monitoring, mitigating and investigating any sort of cybersecurity crime against networks, systems or data running on 3rd party private data centers, networks, servers or simple home-based computers.
The wide selection of cybercrime investigated by private agencies knows no limits, and includes, but isn’t limited to, hacking, cracking, virus and malware distribution, DDoS attacks, online frauds, fraud and social engineering.
Cybercrime investigation techniques
While techniques may vary counting on the sort of cybercrime being investigated, also as who is running the investigation, most digital crimes are subject to some common techniques used during the investigation process.
- Background check: Creating and defining the background of the crime with known facts will help investigators set a start line to determine what they’re facing, and the way much information they need when handling the initial cybercrime report.
- Information gathering: one among the foremost important things any cybersecurity researcher must do is grab the maximum amount information as possible about the incident.
Was it an automatic attack, or a human-based targeted crime? Was there any open opportunity for this attack to happen? what’s the scope and impact? Can this attack be performed by anyone, or by certain people with specific skills? Who are the potential suspects? What digital crimes were committed? Where can the evidence be found? can we have access to such evidence sources?
These and other questions are valuable considerations during the knowledge gathering process.
A lot of national and federal agencies use interviews and surveillance reports to get proof of cybercrime. Surveillance involves not only security cameras, videos and photos, but also device surveillance that details what’s getting used and when, how it’s getting used , and every one the digital behavior involved.
One of the foremost common ways to gather data from cybercriminals is to configure a honeypot which will act as a victim while collecting evidence which will be later be used against attacks, as we previously covered in our Top 20 Honeypots article.
Tracking and identifying the authors: This next step is usually performed during the information-gathering process, counting on what proportion information is already in hand. so as to spot the criminals behind the cyber attack, both private and peace agencies often work with ISPs and networking companies to urge valuable log information about their connections, also as historical service, websites and protocols used during the time they were connected.
This is often the slowest phase, because it requires legal permission from prosecutors and a writ to access the needed data.
- Digital forensics: Once researchers have collected enough data about the cybercrime, it’s time to look at the digital systems that were affected, or those alleged to be involved within the origin of the attack. This process involves analyzing network connection data , hard drives, file systems, caching devices, RAM memory and more. Once the forensic work starts, the involved researcher will follow abreast of all the involved trails trying to find fingerprints in system files, network and repair logs, emails, web-browsing history, etc.
Top 10 cybercrime investigation and forensic tools
Cybercrime investigation tools include tons of utilities, counting on the techniques you’re using and therefore the phase you’re transiting. However, know that the majority of those tools are dedicated to the forensic analysis of knowledge once you’ve got the evidence in hand.
There are thousands of tools for every sort of cybercrime, therefore, this isn’t intended to be a comprehensive list, but a fast check out a number of the simplest resources available for performing forensic activity.
SIFT Workstation
SIFT may be a forensic tool collection created to assist incident response teams and forensic researchers examine digital forensic data on several systems.
It supports differing types of file systems like FAT 12/16/32 also as NTFS, HFS+, EXT2/3/4, UFS1/2v, vmdk, swap, RAM dta and data .
When it involves evidence image support, it works perfectly with single raw image files, AFF (Advanced Forensic Format), EWF (Expert Witness Format, EnCase), AFM (AFF with external metadata), and lots of others.
Other important features include: Ubuntu LTS 16.04 64 bit base system, latest forensic tools, cross compatibility between Linux and Microsoft Windows, choice to install as a stand-alone system, and vast documentation to answer all of your forensic needs.
The Sleuth Kit
Written by Brian Carrier and referred to as TSK, The Sleuth Kit is an open source collection of Unix- and Windows-based forensic tools that helps researchers analyze disk images and recover files from those devices.
Its features include full parsing support for various file systems like FAT/ExFAT, NTFS, Ext2/3/4, UFS 1/2, HFS, ISO 9660 and YAFFS2, which leads in analyzing almost any quite image or disk for Windows-, Linux- and Unix-based operating systems.
Available from the instruction or used as a library, The Sleuth Kit is that the perfect ally for a person curious about data recovery from file systems and raw-based disk images.
X-Ways Forensics
This software is one among the foremost complete forensic suites for Windows-based operating systems. It’s widely supported for nearly any version of Windows, making it one among the simplest during this particular market and letting you easily work with versions like Windows XP/2003/Vista/2008/7/8/8.1/2012/10*, supporting both 32 Bit/64 Bit. one among its coolest features is that the incontrovertible fact that it’s fully portable, making it possible to run it from a memory stick and simply take it from one computer to a different .
Its main features include: ability to perform disk cloning and imaging, read partitions from raw image files, HDDS, RAID arrays, LVM2 and far more.
It also offers advanced detection of deleted partitions on FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT, TFAT, NTFS, Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, etc., also as advanced file carving, and file and directory catalog creation.
CAINE
CAINE isn’t an easy cybercrime investigation application or a set , it’s a full Linux distribution used for digital forensic analysis.
It works from the live CD, and may assist you extract data created on multiple operating systems like Linux, Unix and Windows.
File system, memory or network data extraction, CAINE can roll in the hay all by combining the simplest forensic software that runs on both command-line and GUI-based interfaces.
It includes popular digital crime investigation apps like The Sleuth Kit, Autopsy, Wireshark, PhotoRec, Tinfoleak and lots of others.
Digital Forensics Framework
Known as DFF, the Digital Forensics Framework is computer forensics open-source software that permits digital forensics professionals to get and save system activity on both Windows and Linux operating systems.
It allows researchers to access local and remote devices like removable drives, local drives, remote server file systems, and also to reconstruct VMware virtual disks. When it involves file systems, it can extract data from FAT12/16/32, EXT 2/3/4, and NTFS on both active and deleted files and directories. And it even helps to examine and recover data from memory sticks including network connections, local files and processes.
Oxygen Forensic Detective
This tool is during all one amongst one in every of” one among the simplest multi-platform forensic applications employed by security researchers and forensic professionals to browse all the critical data in a single place.
With Oxygen Forensic Detective you’ll easily extract data from multiple mobile devices, drones and computer OS, including: grabbing passwords from encrypted OS backups, bypassing screen lock on Android, getting critical call data, extracting flight data from drones, user information from Linux, MacOS and Windows computers. It also supports IoT device data extraction.
Open Computer Forensics Architecture
Known as OCFA, Open Computer Forensics Architecture may be a forensic analysis framework written by the Dutch National Police Agency. They developed this software in pursuing the most goal of speeding up their digital crime investigations, allowing researchers to access data from a unified and UX-friendly interface.
It has been integrated into or is a component of the core of the many other popular cybercrime investigation tools like The Sleuth Kit, Scalpel, PhotoRec et al. .
While the official project was discontinued a while ago, this tool still getting used together of the highest forensic solutions by agencies from everywhere the planet . There are many other related projects that are still working with the OCFA code base, those are often found at the official website at SourceForge.
Bulk Extractor
Bulk Extractor is one among the foremost popular apps used for extracting critical information from digital evidence data.
It works by extracting features like URLs, email addresses, mastercard numbers and far more from ISO disk images and directories or just files—including images, videos, office-based and compressed files.
It’s a tool that serves not just for data extraction, except for analysis and collection also . And one among its best attributes is its wide support for nearly any OS platform, including Linux, Unix, Mac and Windows, all without problem.
Also Read: Introduction to Cloud Forensic
ExifTool
Written in Perl, this forensic tool developed by Phil Harvey may be a command-line-based utility which will read, write and manipulate metadata from several media files like images and videos.
ExifTool supports extracting EXIF from images and vídeos (common and specific meta-data) like GPS coordinates, thumbnail images, file type, permissions, file size, camera type, etc.
It also allows you to save lots of the leads to a text-based format or plain HTML.
SurfaceBrowser™
SurfaceBrowser™ is your perfect ally for detecting the complete online infrastructure of any company, and getting valuable intelligence data from DNS records, domain names and their historical WHOIS records, exposed subdomains, SSL certificates data and more.
Analyzing the surface of any company or name on the web is as important as analyzing local drives or ram sticks it can cause finding critical data that would be linked to cybercrimes.
What are you able to do with Surface Browser?
- Get current DNS data
DNS records are an infinite source of intelligence when it involves cybersecurity. They hold the key to all or any publicly exposed internet assets for web, email and other services.
SurfaceBrowser™allows you to look at the present A, AAAA, MX, NS, SOA and TXT records instantly:
- Analyze historical DNS records
A lot of criminals tend to vary DNS records once they commit their malicious activities online, leaving trails of where and the way they did things at the DNS level.
No matter what sort of DNS record they used, you’ll explore any A, AAAA, MX, NS SOA or TXT record; we’ve got you covered.
- Explore the WHOIS history timeline
When the attack isn’t directed at servers or apps but to domain names, it often involves the WHOIS data. For this type of situation, the SurfaceBrowser™ WHOIS history timeline becomes your ally , letting you visualize any changes at registrar level for all of your WHOIS information.
This WHOIS history allows you to jump backwards and forwards instantly, to urge exact information about the domain registrar, WHOIS registrant, admin and technical contact in just seconds.
- Grab full IP block data
While investigating a digital crime that involves companies, networks and particularly IP addresses, getting the complete IP map of the involved infrastructure is critical.
SurfaceBrowser™ allows you to explore single IPs also as full IP blocks, and you’ll filter IP ranges by regional registrar or subnet size.
Once you get the complete list of IP blocks, you’ll be ready to get the complete IP count for every one, unique user agents, RIR, hostnames involved, hosted domains, also as open ports.
- Explore associated domains
When investigating malware, virus, phishing domains or online frauds sometimes you’ll be amazed to seek out that the incident you’re investigating isn’t an isolated case, but actually associated with others and acting as a malicious network that involves many domains.
- Visualize the complete subdomain map
Creating a curated and complete subdomain map of any and every one apex domains is basically easy. Our SurfaceBrowser™ Subdomain discovery feature enables you to urge all this critical data in seconds; no manual scanning, no waiting, it’s beat there.
Visualize the complete picture of all the involved subdomains for any cyber attack, learn where they’re hosted, which IP they’re using and more.
- Access reverse IP intelligence
Reverse DNS is one among the foremost valuable hidden treasures of cybersecurity, as seen in our the way to use reverse DNS records to spot mass scanners blog post.
When you access this interface, you’ll be ready to get our massive store of rDNS intelligence data in your hands, to research and relate PTR records with IP addresses easily.
You’ll even be ready to filter by open ports and similar records.
Topic Related Questions
- Which tool can be used to make forensic image of the data?
- What are some mobile forensic tools?
- Which types of evidence do investigators look for during network forensics investigations?
- What are investigation tools?
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