The Mississippi State Center for Computer Security Research held a seminar for local law enforcement officers Aug. 4-5 to teach skills for solving computer crimes.
The two day seminar focused on computer forensics and cyber crime, mobile forensics tools, PC file systems and imaging, DOS-based investigative techniques, Windows-based investigative software, encryption and decryption and data hiding.
“In the seminar we basically studied how detectives can get evidence off of computers, even after it has been deleted,” Dave Dampier, a computer science and engineering professor, said.
Dampier explained that even after files have been deleted from a computer, traces of the file can still be found.
“Most people think that when they delete something, it is completely off of their computer, but when a file is deleted, that does not been it is gone,” he said.
Officers can use a device to copy all of the information from a computer, and then investigators can sift through the evidence.
“You (the officer) do not want to take an entire computer from a business for the investigation because, many times, the business will not be able to function without the computer,” Steve Lyle, a detective for the Starkville Police Department, said. “The device that they instructed us on keeps you from having to do that.”
Dampier said that computer crimes, such as child pornography cases, are becoming more common than before, but also said that these tools have not been utilized locally at this point.
“Most local departments do not use these tools right now,” he said. “They now know the techniques to work on these cases.”
Detective Lyle said that the District Attorney’s office also offers training for this new technology.
“We have not had to deal with any cases where we would need this technology yet, but it is something that might be needed in the future,” Lyle said.
MSU Police Detective Brad Massey also attended the seminar. He said that the MSU Police Department has not used this type of technology yet, but is now prepared.
“It is good to be informed about these types of things,” Massey said. “There are many things that we could use these devices for.”
Lyle said that a warrant is required for evidence obtained from a computer to be admissible in court.
Computer forensics, in general, deals with finding evidence on computers for cases that deal with many types of crimes.
“Computer evidence is new to most courts and most of them do not know about computer forensics,” Dampier said.