Digital Forensic Investigation on M57 Patents Case

Digital forensic investigation 1
Digital forensic investigation on M57 patents case
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Table of Contents
Introduction...............................................................................................................................................2
M57 patents scenario details.................................................................................................................4
M57.bizz Network..................................................................................................................................5
The organization workstation devices..................................................................................................6
Literature analysis.....................................................................................................................................6
Activity 1....................................................................................................................................................8
Activity 2....................................................................................................................................................9
Activity 3..................................................................................................................................................11
Discussion.................................................................................................................................................13
Conclusion................................................................................................................................................14
Reference list............................................................................................................................................15
Introduction
With the progress in time and advancement as well as evolution in technology, the use of
computers has and will increase in our daily lives. This owes to the fact that the digitalized
generation has become more dependent on computers to an extent that computers are used in
nearly all facets of our daily activities including organizations, institutions, and for personal use.
It is safe to calculate the rise of crime that has been facilitated by the advanced technology by

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evaluating the past trends of technology. Findings from various studies cite that criminals have
put a strain in computer forensic examiners today (Taylor, Haggerty, Gresty, and Lamb, 2011,
pp.4-10; Grispos, Storer, and Glisson, 2012, pp.28-48). This is due to the reason that a
significant number of crime, nowadays, are often facilitated by computers as well as other
computing devices of some sort including smartphones among other gadgets. Moreover, the
computer hardware and software, as well as the wireless technology, are getting more
sophisticated and portable thus increasing the level of crime (Damshenas, Dehghantanha,
Mahmoud and bin Shamsuddin, 2013, p.543).
Considering the evolution in technology as well as updates on what is to be considered
evidence, a proper training, and education in computer forensics should be considered (Chung,
Park, Lee, and Kang, 2012, pp.81-95; Rekhis and Boudriga, 2012, pp.635-650). It is important to
find out what a crime entails where computers are involved, it is also important to examine any
potential evidence of a crime on the digital media. There has been a considerable growth in
crime rates, as such, computer forensics is becoming increasingly important (Agarwal, and
Kothari, 2015, pp. 561-571; Liberatore, Erdely, Kerle, Levine, and Shields, 2010, pp.S95-S103).
Computer forensic entails expertise as well as the methods drawn from information and
communication technology domain, psychology, and criminology among other related fields
(Raghavan, 2013, pp.91-114; Seo, Lim, and Lee, 2009, pp.182-190; Valjarevic, and Venter,
2013, pp. 1-9). It is essential not just for mastering the digital forensic tools but also to have and
understanding of the advantages and limitations of the tools in their application in the real world
situation.
One critical issue in digital forensics is that real data is always not stable because of the
presence of confidential information. As such, there is need of disks for memory dumps, images,

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and packet dumps for use, however, the resulting data is rarely realistic (Chung et al. 2012,
pp.81-95; Beebe, 2009, pp. 17-36; Grispos, Storer, and Glisson, 2012, pp.28-48). The primary
objective of this report is to demonstrate the practical use of the digital forensic tools through
analysis of M57 organization cyber-crime scenario.
As this article attempts to meet the stated objective, it seeks to respond to the questions
stated below:
i. What are the appropriate digital forensic tools for addressing the M57 scenario?
ii. What is the process involved in addressing the scenario?
M57 patents scenario details
As stated in the scenario, the M57 is a patent search organization that do investigations
for its clients’ patent information. The scenario starts when the company has four employees
including the founder and the CEO of the organization named Pat McGoo, the company’s
administrator Terry Johnston and two patent researchers called Jo Smith and Charlie Brown. The
organization has a plan for employing more employees as it books new clients. Since the
organization needs to employ more personnel, they must be having more technology at hand that
is not utilized.
The roles of the organization’s employees are checking and writing emails, staging and
conducting various illegal or malicious activities surfing the internet, using document creation
software including office among other responsibilities. The illegal activities associated with the
organization’s employees are not limited to theft of the organization’s property, using spyware
including loggers, proprietary information exfiltration and viewing illegal content using the