How Cyber Forensics Helps Solve Cybercrimes? Complete Guide
Moreover,Cyber forensics is an important branch of forensic science. It is also known as digital forensics. It plays a very important role within forensic science, mainly dealing with analyzing and retrieving data from systems. How cyber forensics helps solve cybercrimes lies in its ability to uncover, analyze, and preserve digital evidence critical to investigations. Additionally, Cyber forensics professionals, often known as digital forensics experts, use various scientific methods to collect, analyse, and preserve digital evidence. This field transformed the criminal justice system.
By bridging traditional investigations and modern technology, cyber forensics equips law enforcement and enterprises to uncover hidden truths and pursue justice. With advanced technology, Cybercrimes are becoming harder to prevent, but the experts always keep up to date and develop solutions for all types of attacks. Digital forensics can often be confused with cybersecurity; however, that is not the case.
Types of Crimes Solved Through Cyber Forensics
Various problems are solved using the field of digital forensics few examples are:
- Craiglist Killer Case- In Boston in 2009, the Craigslist killer was caught by the police after they analysed the victims’ Emails on Craigslist and tracked down the killer’s IP address using them.
- The Cold Case Of Terri McAdams- 40 years after her death, the case was solved using modern DNA trace technology.
- The Golden State Killer Case- Using the DNA found on the crime scene, the investigators uploaded the DNA on GEDmatch and found the killer using family trees.
- Online Financial Crimes- Many fraudsters and thieves are caught using their digital fingerprints.
- Cyber Espionage- Information is the most important resource. Both governments and large corporations have used digital forensics to catch spies.
Techniques and Tools Used in Cyber Forensics
Investigators employ a rich mix of methods and software:
- File Carving – Used to recover deleted or partially damaged files
- Chain of Custody – Tracks evidence handling to uphold legal integrity.
- Data Recovery – Retrieves deleted or corrupted information.
- Hash Calculation – Verifies data integrity via digital fingerprints.
- Timeline Analysis – Reconstructs the sequence of digital events.
- Steganography Detection – Uncovers hidden information within files.
Services used by Cyber Forensic experts
- Analyzing system images.
- Performing disk imaging and forensic analysis.
- Examining live system memory.
- Digging into file system structures.
- Extracting and reporting mobile data.
- Recovering deleted or fragmented video evidence.
- Handling network forensics.
- Disk cloning and artifact analysis.
What are the Branches of Digital Forensics?
There are 4 branches of Digital Forensics:
- Computer forensics- This deals with any type of data related to the computers submitted as Evidence. Moreover, it deals with all the components of the computer involved, from internet history to stored data to activity time on different applications. It is pretty similar to data recovery but has its additional guidelines and rules. Computers have additional information besides stored data and help analyze the psychological behavior of the individual as well.s
- Network Forensics- This is the most difficult branch because analyzing data across a network becomes impossible once the data leaves it. Scientists working in this field stay highly cautious and well-prepared.
- Mobile device forensics- In the 21st Century, mobile phones have become an essential part of the major global population. This makes mobiles one of the best-used evidence or research tools in an investigation. However, This branch deals with Mobile phones, tablets, GPS devices, etc. Investigators even use damaged devices to recover key data helpful to an ongoing case.
- Database forensics- Using Database Forensics, authorities identify transactions related to key data that could be essential to the case. Experts in this field work hand in hand with authorities to help them recover this. It is also used to find lapses in databases to help analyse if anyone was tempering with Databse in a malicious way. Combining these methods transforms raw digital data into admissible court evidence.
Benefits of Cyber Forensics
Cyber forensics delivers numerous advantages:
- Hastens the crime-solving process- Be it theft or terrorism, all modern crimes have digital footprints. Using cyber forensics, you can extract valuable leads and evidence.
- Providing security to corporate assets like sensitive data, finances, and IP.
- Recovery of lost or stolen data.
- Ticks all the legal and regulatory checkboxes.
- Educating people on Digital behaviour.
- Hastens the process of recovery.
- Provides security against Fraud.
- Interagency or inter-organization cooperation is promoted.
- Investigation can be easily made global.
- Constant evolution in digital crime fighting.
- Helps you secure your Digital privacy.
Conclusion
Cyberforensics is a field where experts and authorities work hand in hand to analyse key digital signature data and other digital evidence to help solve a crime. It also involves dealing with DNA evidence, be it regenerating partial DNA matches or older DNA records of unsolved cases. Digital Forensics helps in dealing with all these to uncover the truth behind crimes.
Investigators use digital forensics to uncover the identity of culprits involved in espionage. Both government and corporations actively use digital forensics to solve crimes and recover evidence and data. You can also contact our team at Cybersics to learn more about Digital Forensics services.