Cloud computing is dominating the current digital world. Multiple organizations and governments are investing in cloud innovations to enable the storage and retrieval of big data with data expected to continue growing at a rapid rate. Computer forensics transformed the collection of traditional “dead-box” evidence collection evidence and full-disk acquisitions techniques to digital data investigation. However, has the evolution of cloud computing enhanced or limited forensic investigations?
Evolution of Cloud Computing
The concept of cloud computing first came to existence in the 1950s but even at the time, it was nothing similar to the current dominating innovation. The growth and development of the idea would take more than two decades before the pathway of facilitating modern digitalization. In the mid-1980s the ‘web servers’ enabled the additional solid, customs, and dynamic reckonings thus leading to the development of a Common Gateway Interface. The web servers transformed and improved drastically and by the mid-1990s Html records and web applications would become the norm of computing (Kaur & Kaur, 2014).
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Since the mid-1990s computer innovations focused on virtualization that would be beyond virtual servers towards the abstraction, storage, network resources and finally the virtual applications. Virtual applications do not have underlying infrastructure that was needed in the past virtual platforms. The embracement of the internet and innovations such as computer PC and smartphone increased the data requirements and challenges of storing big data (Kaur & Kaur, 2014). The social platforms increased the rates of big data production with videos, in social media and images, blogs among other data produced the need for bigger and more accessible storage devices was needed since the physical immobile datacenters and stores were inadequate and unreliable. Hence the move towards databases that would store all these data and enhance accessibility. The internet provided the platforms to create the virtual applications and enable the realizations of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) that are the approaches of cloud computing.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
This approach of cloud computing entails the provision of software through the browsers and internet such as email systems, payroll processing that are prebuilt functionally independent and integrated to the universally available applications. The use of these applications by one user does not affect the use of the same app by another person as long as they have access to the internet. The programming interface is similar to API that enables integration between various tools of a software (Kaur & Kaur, 2014). Some of the most known examples of providers include Microsoft office online, Facebook and other social web-based platforms.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
PaaS entails the provision of software, coding an application in the cloud. Application servers such as.Net framework, Java and Database server such as Oracle are available in the cloud thus enabling the consumers to make their own applications (Kaur & Kaur, 2014). PaaS reduces the costs, complexities, and maintenance of software. It also enables users to use software online thus further diminishing the requirement of installing the app.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
IaaS allows the delivery of computing resources from hardware, storage, operating system, network and storage devices as On Demand Service (Kaur & Kaur, 2014). The IaaS combines the public and private infrastructure that enable dynamic scaling, multiple users of the same hardware at the same time.
The three approaches of cloud computing are provided through three types of clouds that include, public, private, and hybrid cloud. The difference between the private and public cloud is that private cloud is secured intranet used by organizations to store, control, and secure their data without and limiting the investment of physical data centers. Public cloud is accessible to the public domain thus accessible by anyone via the internet but controlled by the provider. The main public clouds are Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web services (Kaur & Kaur, 2014). Lastly, hybrid cloud combines the private and public clouds. The cloud computing has increased the value of big data and diminished the need for large data centers that are immobile, however, does it improve forensic investigations?
Computer Forensic
Computer forensics is the use of analytical and investigative methods to identify, collect, examine, and preserve evidence and store or encode magnetically. It uses experts to recover deleted, damaged or encrypted files that provide digital evidence useful to investigators to build their cases and admissible in a court of law (Slusky, Partow-Navid, & Doshi, 2012). Cybercriminals such as espionage, hackers, cyberbullying, child pornography or crimes perpetrated via modern technology are crimes that investigators mainly use computer forensics. The computer forensic experts’ faces challenges such as the advancement of the technological superiority of the criminals that make it easier for criminals to develop new breach techniques and vulnerabilities (Slusky, Partow-Navid, & Doshi, 2012). The inadequate computer forensic experts and the rapid change in the malware and techniques developed to breach the data demonstrate most cybercrimes are undetected or impossible to prosecute.
Impacts of Cloud Computing on Computer Forensic
Cloud Computer Forensic investigations focus on the evidence discovery for prosecution and data recovery on destroyed or deleted data. According to Urias, Young, and Hatcher (2010), digital forensics integrates investigative and analytical techniques that enable the collection of evidence via computer and using the tools to analyze the collected data. The collection and analysis entail the use of model or process known as forensic-as-a-service that uses a server-side technique whereby the investigators upload the images of the crime scenes to the cloud (Urias, Young & Hatcher, 2010). The investigating team then distributes the uploaded images and files in selected servers and copies made to enable the investigators to perform the forensic tasks. The use computers to index and search by typing keywords enables the investigators to determine the similarities with other unsolved cases which would be essential in determining whether the crime was performed by the same person as an earlier case. The server-side enable the uploading of multiple images, videos, and information regarding a crime. Upload such as, digital media and postmortem that provide logical or physical acquisition to the server-side (Urias, Young & Hatcher, 2010). The server-side, integrate with the client-side thus enabling the collection and analyzing of the forensic evidence.
The cloud offers big data that is useful in the discovery of the data as it makes it difficult for criminals to erase data completely from the cloud. Nevertheless, it also increases the risks of data contamination by the perpetrator of the crime (Slusky, Partow-Navid, & Doshi, 2012). According to Frowen (2010), the lack of a foolproof universal method for extracting data from the cloud that is admissible in court diminishes the success of computer forensic investigations. The use of virtual machines (VM) eases the ability of the criminal to initiate a cross-VM attack against a server by implanting a malicious VM in close proximity to the data thus manipulating the evidence (Frowen, 2010). The cloud reduces the time taken to collect and discover evidence and the analysis process but the lack of an acceptable extraction and the vulnerabilities associated with cloud computing reduces the success of computer forensics. Other issues that diminish the use and success of computer forensic are jurisdiction issues because of the infinite cyberspace.
References
Frowen, A. (2010). Cloud Computing and Computer Forensics. Retrieved November 14, 2018, from http://www.artipot.com/articles/384511/cloud forensics.htm.
Kaur, R., & Kaur, A. (2014). A Review Paper on Evolution of Cloud Computing, its Approaches and Comparison with Grid Computing. International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technologies, 5 (5), 6060-6063.
Slusky, L., Partow-Navid, P., & Doshi, M. (2012). Cloud computing and computer forensics for business applications. Journal of Technology Research .
Urias, V., Young, J., & Hatcher, S. (2010). Implications of Cloud Computing on Digital Forensics. GSTF International Journal on Computing , 1 (1), 131-136.
