Month: June 2016

UNIX and Linux Forensic Analysis DVD Toolkit

UNIX and Linux Forensic Analysis DVD Toolkit 1st Edition

by Chris Pogue (Author), Cory Altheide (Author), Todd Haverkos (Author)

This book addresses topics in the area of forensic analysis of systems running on variants of the UNIX operating system, which is the choice of hackers for their attack platforms. According to a 2007 IDC report, UNIX servers account for the second-largest segment of spending (behind Windows) in the worldwide server market with $4.2 billion in 2Q07, representing 31.7% of corporate server spending. UNIX systems have not been analyzed to any significant depth largely due to a lack of understanding on the part of the investigator, an understanding and knowledge base that has been achieved by the attacker.

The book begins with a chapter to describe why and how the book was written, and for whom, and then immediately begins addressing the issues of live response (volatile) data collection and analysis. The book continues by addressing issues of collecting and analyzing the contents of physical memory (i.e., RAM). The following chapters address /proc analysis, revealing the wealth of significant evidence, and analysis of files created by or on UNIX systems. Then the book addresses the underground world of UNIX hacking and reveals methods and techniques used by hackers, malware coders, and anti-forensic developers. The book then illustrates to the investigator how to analyze these files and extract the information they need to perform a comprehensive forensic analysis. The final chapter includes a detailed discussion of loadable kernel Modules and malware.

Throughout the book the author provides a wealth of unique information, providing tools, techniques and information that won’t be found anywhere else.

  • This book contains information about UNIX forensic analysis that is not available anywhere else. Much of the information is a result of the author’s own unique research and work.
  • The authors have the combined experience of law enforcement, military, and corporate forensics. This unique perspective makes this book attractive to all forensic investigators.

Buy it from Amazon

The Profile Of A Cybercriminal

THE PROFILE OF A CYBERCRIMINAL

FADI ABU ZUHRI

Profiling is a technique or approach for solving crime. Some scientist define it as a forensic technique used by forensic investigators and law enforcement agencies to understand why criminals are committing crime, to classify criminal behavior and to solve crimes that have already been committed (Saroha, 2014). Others view it as a tool used by forensic experts to identify the offender’s behavioral tendencies, personality traits, demographic variables, and geographical variables based on the information and characteristics of the crime (Lickiewicz, 2011). However, the general consensus is that criminal profiling involves collecting inferences about the traits of the individual responsible for the series of crime or for a particular crime. It involves understanding what a particular crime says about the perpetrator (Kirwan, & Power, 2013). It is used by forensic investigators and law enforcement agencies to understand and apprehend criminal offenders. As a forensic technique, criminal profiling enables investigative agencies to use the specific information to focus their attention on people with personality traits that parallel those of other offenders who have committed other similar offences (Kirwan, & Power, 2013). Integrating the sciences and the arts, criminal profiling allows investigators to analyze victims and crime scene and comparing them to similar crimes committed by known offenders’ personalities and traits. From this, the criminal profiler can predict the unknown offender’s characteristics including sex, age, and level of mental stability, geographical location and motivation (Lickiewicz, 2011). The investigators can also link other offences committed by the offender from the offender’s signature and modus operandi identified from the physical evidence collected at the setting where the crime occurred and scene of crime (Saroha, 2014). As such, criminal profiling contains information about the perpetrators (Kirwan, 2011):

  • Likely demographics (i.e., gender and age)
  • Legal history including history of prior criminal convictions/offenses and any antecedence
  • Vocational backgrounds that is the work the perpetrator is likely to be involved in, if any
  • Social interests and habits (hobbies, sports, and other interests in which the perpetrator may have)
  • Family characteristics including the offender’s family background
  • Various personality characteristics including the offender’s appearance, demeanor etc
  • Mode of transport (i.e., type of vehicle that they offender may have)

In essence, criminal profiling is primarily based on the assertion that the format in which the offender committed the offence reflects his or her behavior and personality.

Modern criminal profiling takes two forms: the deductive and inductive approaches. He former is evidence-based involving analyzing the evidence found from the case in order to construct the offender’s behavioral profile. This way, the offender’s profile is constructed based on the evidences and information found at the crime scene (Kirwan, 2011). Professionals use this approach to get into the mind of the criminal. They try to think in the same way the offender may have thought whiling committing the crime. This type of criminal profiling is largely based on human intelligence rather than on statistical data. The later type of profiling uses the statistical analysis of the previous offender’s characteristics to generate a generalized behavioral pattern of the perpetrator. Comparative and statistical analyses are used to create the profile of the criminal. Information comes from results of studies of previously convicted criminals, their interviews, observation, data from official databases, and the usage of clinical methods. The profiler analyzes all these information and constructs a possible profile of the likely offender of the type of crime basing on the traits of criminals that committed similar types of crimes. The inductive technique is basically based on the inductive logic, which forms the basis of narrowing down and predicting who will commit specific types of crimes (Halder, & Jaishankar, 2011).

In addition to the offender’s biological information; it is worth noting that criminal profiles include information about the perpetrator’s residence and approximate location. This information is the product of geographic profiling. Regardless of the type of criminal profiling approach employed, criminal profiling alone can never solve crimes alone (Long, 2012).

Discerning the motivations for committing a particular cyber-crime is important as it helps the forensic expert to build a useful profile for the offender. It is suggested that people may be motivated by different factors to break the law. Based on the perpetrator’s motives, criminals can be categorized into two: criminals whose act of using the internet to commit crime is incidental; and criminals who intentionally and knowingly use the internet to commit crime. Criminals who knowingly use the internet to commit crime include white-collar criminals, hackers, computer con artists, network attackers and crackers (Long, 2012). The second type of criminals use the computer to keep record, use the network to identify and find victims, and those who use e-mail and other services to communicate with their accomplices. The motivations offered by cyber-criminal for their activity seems to be largely influenced by their sensitivity towards agendas raised by various groups to oppose hacking. For example, the computer security industry has been accused of over-emphasizing the pathological aspect of hacking and vandal-oriented motivations. The motivation behind the hacker participation in hacking can be categorized into six: peer recognition, enjoying feelings of power, the urge of curiosity, the feelings of addiction, boredom with education system, and political acts (Long, 2012). For some criminals, they are motivated to do the forbidden act while for others, crime offers them the opportunity to manipulate and control others. Most criminals committing crime in the cyber space are strongly motivated with their motivation ranging from simply want to have fun to the desire or need for emotional or sexual impulse, money, political motives, or compulsions caused by psychiatric conditions of mental illness (Long, 2012). On the other hand, some cybercriminals are driven by less noble motives such as lust, desperation, anger, or plain boredom. It is important to discern motives and motivations for committing a particular crime as forms an important part of creating a useful profile (Schinder, 2010).

Because of the influence of Hollywood and the untypical nature of crime today; there are many stereotypes on how cybercriminals appear. Some of the stereotypes include that all cybercriminals (1) are socially inept but bright; (2) have a great technical skills and knowledge and very high IQs; (3) are males and usually boys; (4) teenage boys with computers and dangerous criminals, and (5) all cybercriminals are never violent. According to Lickiewicz (2011) when creating a profile for cybercriminals, a law enforcement official should always begin with generalities that are identified and typical of cybercriminals. According to Lickiewicz (2011) for an individual to commit a cyber-crime, he or she should have the ability to perform basic tasks on the internet. Some crimes also require greater computer skill and knowledge. These types of criminals are same as those who commit crime in the physical world. They do not believe and respect the law. They believe that some laws should be broken because they are unreasonable. Many of these criminals use the internet to fulfill their fantasies. They use it to build new identities and to play other people’s role. Cybercriminals often use more energy than they get in return (Kirwan, 2011).

Understanding the motives of the criminals is also important because in many jurisdictions, one of the elements of providing that an accused individual is guilt is by showing that he or she posses each of the crime triangle: motive, the opportunity, and the means. The motive is the perpetrator’s reason for committing a crime (Atkinson, & Walker, 2015). The means is the perpetrator’s way of committing a crime. The opportunity is the offender being at the scene at the right time to enable him commits a crime. Therefore, understating the motive of the criminal in an investigation is useful for two reasons: (1) when creating the offender’s profile to help in the identification of the correct perpetrator; and (2) when presenting a case against the suspect. Common motives for criminals committing cybercrimes include: sexual impulses, political motives, monetary profit, just for fun, revenge, anger, and other emotional needs, and serious psychiatric illness (Atkinson, & Walker, 2015). These characteristics should be used when profiling cybercriminals. Every message, every word and every trace is important when creating criminal profile.

CONCLUSION

It is clear from this paper, that criminal profiling means a lot to the investigators. It allows investigators to link motive, character, act and behavior of the offender. Although it primarily focuses on serial violent offenses such as sexual assaults and murders, the changes in technology has increased the emphasis and interest on applying it to cybercrime. Most cybercrimes are by nature serial in that the offender habituates their behavior and commit multiple offenses. From this, signature and modus operandi can be drawn. For example, analysis of indicators of the attack’s “digital crime scene” can determine the computer hacker’s intrusion activity and provide them with an insight. As such, it is an important method when it comes to classifying criminal investigations.

When an investigator uses profiling as the method to solve a criminal case; it is always important to see the scene of crime, find traces, and evidence that a criminal leaves at the crime scene. This way, the profiler can make good profiler of the offender.

REFERENCES

Atkinson, S., & Walker, C. (2015). Psychology and the hacker – Psychological Incident. SANS Institute InfoSec Reading Room.

Halder, D., & Jaishankar, K. (2011), Cyber crime and the victimization of women: laws, rights and regulations, Information Science Reference.

Kirwan G (2011). The Psychology of Cyber Crime: Concepts and Principles. IGI Global.

Kirwan, G., & Power, A. (2013). Cybercrime: Psychology of cybercrime. Dublin: Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology.

Lickiewicz, J. (2011). Cyber Crime psychology-proposal of an offender psychological profile. Problems of forensic sciences, 2(3): 239-252.

Long, L. (2012). Profiling Hackers. SANS Institute. Retrieved on 8th July 2016 from http://www.sans.org/readingroom/whitepapers/hackers/profiling-hackers-33864

Saroha, R. (2014). Profiling a Cyber Criminal. International Journal of Information and Computation Technology, 4(3): 253-258.

Schinder, D. (2010). Profiling and categorizing cybercriminals. Tech Republic Retrieved on 8 th July 2016 from http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/it-security/profiling-and-categorizing-cybercriminals/handling.

Tompsett, E.C., Marshall, A.M., & Semmens, C.N. (2005). Cyberprofiling: Offender Profiling and Geographic Profiling of Crime on the Internet. Computer Network Forensics Research Workshop.

Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships

Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships Audio CD – Audiobook, CD, Unabridged

by Daniel Goleman (Author)
Emotional Intelligence was an international phenomenon, appearing on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year, and selling more than five million copies worldwide. Now, once again, Daniel Goleman presents groundbreaking work that synthesizes the latest findings in biology and brain science, revealing that we are “wired to connect,” and showing the surprisingly deep impact of our relationships on every aspect our lives.
In richly anecdotal detail, Goleman brings to life the entirely new field of social neuroscience that has emerged in the decade since the publication of Emotional Intelligence. He shows that, far more than we are consciously aware, our daily encounters with parents, spouses, bosses, and even strangers shape our brains and affect cells throughout our bodies. Our relationships create a setpoint for our daily moods and influence our immune response; they are crucial to achievement in students and workers; they determine whether or not some genes are expressed, for good or ill.
Above all, Goleman explores the foundations of rapport, love, cooperation, and altruism, with major implications for the wellbeing of our families, communities, and workplaces. Whether you listen to this as a lover or parent, medical professional or businessperson, teacher or community leader, you will never see your relationships in the same way again.

Cyber Profiling: Benefits And Pitfalls

CYBER PROFILING: BENEFITS AND PITFALLS

FADI ABU ZUHRI

Vetting employees by conducting traditional background checks helps minimize insider risks. This practice helps employers to unknowingly hire cybercriminals or convicted persons. However, non-traditional vetting practices have emerged. These practices take advantage of the increase in the number of candidates who build online profiles. These vetting practices are collectively referred to cyber-vetting or cyber profiling.

Organizations using cyber-profiling understand that today’s employees spend much of their time on surfing the web. They visit and contribute to social networking sites including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and others. These sites offer services that allow them to link up and enable them to communicate with others. They also record information that can be used by potential employees to assess the potential candidate’s cultural fit, character, and other characteristics and attributes (Rose, Timm, Pogson, Gonzalez, Appel, & Kolb, 2011). Organizations obtain information from these social media sites to help them understand whether a potential job candidate may be fit for the job or present a risk to their organization once hired. There are many examples that demonstrate this. First, the candidate harbors views about religion, race and other sensitive social domains on his social networking site that are considered to be potentially inflammatory. For example, a man in the UK was not interviewed by an employer because he had indicated in his Facebook personal profile that he did not like and was against people who are religious and anybody who believed in religion. Secondly, the job candidate’s views on a given topic that makes the employee to see him/her as being culturally unfit for the business. Thirdly, the job candidate’s participation or involvement in political or activist action group may pose a threat to the organization because his action would conflict with the business agendas.

Again, the number of firms using social media sites to screen employee varies by country. These examples demonstrate that cyber-profiling enables employees to understand their prospective candidates’ character. It provides a deeper insight in the candidates’ character. For this reasons, many firms are increasingly turning to cyber-profiling. The number of firms using social media sites for cyber-profiling has been growing and varies by country. About 77% of the firms in the U.S use cyber-profiling and 20% in the UK (Kirwan & Power, 2013). Worth noting is that cyber-profiling have potential negative social pitfalls and positive business benefits

BENEFITS OF CYBER PROFILING

Cyber-vetting enables businesses to look for red flags that suggest potential incompatibility with the firm or position. This way, a firm can ostensibly screen candidates more comprehensively before scheduling the interview, thus saving money and time.

Through cyber-vetting, the organization can ensure employees managing critical systems or handling sensitive information present low to the business (Saroha, 2014). Cyber-profiling provides deeper insights into a prospective candidate’s character. In today’s world, conducting internet business assessment enables organizations to ensure the candidates selected reflect the organization’s values, whether acting during personal time or on behalf of the organization. Again, since insiders are responsible for 80% of the security incidents of all organizations, it is important for an organization to employ candidates who are trusted. Background checks into the candidates profile provide employees with vital information about their involvement in civil action, criminal investigations, or financial problems. However, these checks are not enough because they do not report about the candidate’s with clean history, his general behavior and character.

It has also been argued that methods of cyber profiling are useful to some kind of crimes. For examples, the crimes where the offenders shows the essential psychopathology signs, crimes which are related to the pattern, cycle of crimes and sequence, sadistic or brutal, victimization of strangers and assaulting of unfamiliar persons, and the crimes with huge dialogues and exchanges with the victims. In this case, the methods of cyber profiling have the ability of assisting and enriching further the manner and progress of investigation for many violent crimes and other related crimes that need immediate resolution and special attention. Appropriate interrogation requires an appropriate interrogation that requires appropriate emotional approach and passion with good application of principles and methods of psychology together with the suspect psyche so as to generate positive results (Abu Zuhri, 2012).

In this case, four benefits of cyber profiling include, easy of identifying and recognizing physical evidence, existence of the profile on the motivation and source desire of the offender, existence of a profile about the mentality or psyche of the offender and the existence of the profile about behavior functioning patters like the behavioral signature. These four merits provide appropriate direction in performing the traditional methods like work surveillance, appraisal and relentless follow-up, making sure that precise and suitable intelligence network is provided, and implementation and creation of tactics and strategies that are valuable (Abu Zuhri, 2012).

Cyber profiling methods offer huge benefits than the traditional detection methods (Mikkelson, 2010). All the methods of cyber profiling act as tools used in crime control measures designed for unlicking the missing puzzle that may give a lead into arresting the suspected criminal. In addition to physical evidence like DNA, geospatial information happens to hold the merits for a successful process of linking. This is so because the serial offenders offer a reflection of some degree of behavior consistency even though certain behavior appears being less stable and susceptible to influence mostly in sexual offences (Alison, Goodwill, Almond, Heuvel, & Winter, 2010). The other methods of profile do not replace traditional methods but act as a supplement in enriching the traditional methods and are suitable for specific types of crimes. Each method is effective but has its own limitation as per the professional levels of quality and technical competency, commitment, and character of users.

The evidence gathered during profiling is valuable in the sense that it helps in strengthening the aspect of prosecution of the case under a criminal system of justice so as to ensure that the conviction of the suspected offender or avoiding the chance of acquittal as a result of some technicalities and weakened evidences. In addition the result of the applied methods of profiling are as proficient and the hard work and the process involved in traditional investigation (Abu Zuhri, 2012).

PITFALLS OF CYBER PROFILING

Trying to investigate and understand people’s character by looking at their online persona or profiles presents several challenges. First, cyber-profiling is restricted only to the person’s online persona. However, many social networkers tend to create digital identities that completely differ from their actual belief system or personality (Berger, 2015). Many do this to try and fit into certain groups. However, employers do not separate between the digital and the real person. They do not distinguish between the professional comportment and social networking personas. This way, they evaluate candidates using a western perception of a unified and singular identity. In doing this, employers end up using whatever they get from the internet regarding the person irrespective of whether the agenda or intent of the individual posting the information is evaluated or known or whether it is vetted or not. Such oversights may cause the organization to unfairly tag a candidate as unfit during the hiring process. Secondly, using cyber-profiling, employers can see the candidates’ education highlighted on their social media profiles. However, they cannot perform document authentication and verification for education background checks. Also, employers can see the candidates’ dates and past employment but cannot verify the records of the employment they possess. It is not also possible for employers to reference-check the candidate and cannot judge candidates for their criminals’ acts as it is impossible to use cyber vetting to perform a criminal background checks.

It has also been argued that there are some cases where the investigators would fail to provide physical evidence when they fall short of identifying the physical evidence as a result of not being equipped for the process. The possible blinders and weaknesses of criminal investigation is one reason why the experts of crime profiling act as separate auxiliary service and as a section of competent handling team for the investigation. This has helped the team to work as a team in observing and following the protocol and standard of each method of profiling. In this case, the whole process is an evidence-based approach that has no room for shortcut methods. These realities show the reinforcement of the strategic values and the relevance of the methods of offender profiling in offering technical help to the traditional criminal investigation methods (Abu Zuhri, 2012).

The other weakness of cyber profiling is the internal barrier that influences the process of decision and discernments to the possible professional competition and jealousy among the experts having unique personalities (Tompsett, Marshall, & Semmens, 2005). This weakness needs to be reduced to levels considered being manageable. The merit of having the benefits harnessed is the completion and teamwork spirit and rather not competition.

CONCLUSION

Cyber-profiling has potential negative social pitfalls and positive business. Some of the benefits include (1) enabling businesses to look for red flags that suggest potential incompatibility with the firm or position; (2) enables organization to ensure employees manage critical systems or handling sensitive information present low risk to the business; (3) provides deeper insights into a prospective candidate’s character. Some of the pitfalls include: (1) it is restricted only to the person’s online persona; (2) it does not enable employers perform document authentication and verification for education background checks; and (3) it does possible to reference-check the candidate and it is impossible to use cyber vetting to perform a criminal background checks.

REFERENCES

Abu Zuhri, F. (2012). Dynamics of Emotional Quotient (EQ) in IT Auditing Practice: Are the Dynamics Limiting or Empowering? University of Portsmouth.

Alison, L., Goodwill, A., Almond, L., Heuvel, C. v., & Winter, J. (2010). Pragmatic solutions to offender profiling and behavior investigative advice. Legal and criminological psychology , 15, 115-132.

Berger, J. L. (2015). Cyber-vetting: A common Antecedents Model. Doctorate Dissertation, Green State University, Graduate College of Bowling.

Kirwan, G., & Power, A. (2013). Cybercrime: Psychology of cybercrime. Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dublin.

Mikkelson, K. (2010). Cyber-vetting and Monitoring Employees’ Online Activities: Assessing the Legal Risks for Employers. American Bar Association , 18 (2), 124-146.

Rose, A. G., Timm, H., Pogson, C., Gonzalez, J., Appel, E., & Kolb, N. (2011). Developing a cybervetting strategy for law enforcement. International Association of Chiefs of Defense Personnel Security Research Center.

Saroha, R. (2014). Profiling a Cyber Criminal. International Journal of Information and Computation Technology , 4 (3), 253-258.

Tompsett, E. C., Marshall, A. M., & Semmens, C. N. (2005). Cyberprofiling: Offender Profiling and Geographic Profiling of Crime on the Internet. Computer Network Forensics Research Workshop.

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