Chapter 19: Advanced Computer Forensics

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OVERVIEW

The rise of the so-called information economy, borne along by proliferating computers, sprawling telecommunications, and the Internet, has radically transformed how people do business, govern, entertain themselves, and converse with friends and family. Private documents that in the past would have been committed to paper and hand-delivered or stowed under lock and key are now routinely created, sent, and stored electronically.

But the very things that allow such speed and ease of communication have also made it far more difficult to ensure one’s privacy.[i] In an electronic age, an interloper can intercept and alter messages far more easily now than when face-to-face exchanges were the norm.

Mounting concern over the new threats to privacy and security has led to widespread adoption of cryptography. Once the purview of professional spies, strong encryption is now available worldwide to any amateur with a PC and inexpensive, off-the-shelf software.

Over the past two decades, individuals and businesses alike have embraced the technology, using it for everything from sending e-mail and storing medical records and legal contracts to conducting on-line transactions. Cryptographic algorithms are written into all the most popular World Wide Web browsers and can be readily incorporated into most e-mail programs.

But if ordinary individuals can now encrypt a message in all but unbreakable form, then so can criminals, terrorists, and other troublemakers. That prospect has governments on edge. In the past, armed (or not) with a court warrant, police could readily get at hidden documents by, say, forcing a safe. But physical force is of no use in decoding computer-encrypted data.

This turn of events has led many governments worldwide to view the technology as a grave threat to social order and to seek to control its spread. Repressive regimes fear that dissident groups will use encryption to promote their subversive ideas. Democratic governments, too, fret over the possibility that encryption will be used to further the activities of drug dealers, militant dissenters, and assorted enemies of the state. Indeed, the U.S. government once categorized encryption technology as a controlled munition, on a par with nuclear weapons, and until very recently it banned the export of the most advanced encryption products.

State controls have met with fierce protests, pitting governments against an unlikely confederacy of privacy rights advocates, cryptography experts, and corporations with a financial stake in promoting encryption’s use. The ensuing battle over encryption has taken on several dimensions—technical, legal, ethical, and social. At times, the arguments have assumed the same rigidity and polarization as certain religious debates.

With the rise of hard-to-crack encryption, sensitive data is easier to protect—and criminal activity tougher to monitor. This part of the chapter will review the advanced encryption techniques now available worldwide and discuss the legal campaigns that governments have mounted in response, including the changes recently proposed to U.S. export laws.

[i]John R. Vacca, Net Privacy: A Guide to Developing & Implementing an Ironclad ebusiness Privacy Plan, McGraw-Hill, 2001.



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Computer Forensics. Computer Crime Scene Investigation
Computer Forensics: Computer Crime Scene Investigation (With CD-ROM) (Networking Series)
ISBN: 1584500182
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 263
Authors: John R. Vacca

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