An evidence collection and analysis of Windows registry

Abstract

Cyber crimes are committed internally or externally. Malwares and remote access are the means of committing cyber crimes externally, whereas the trusted insider in an organisation causes industrial espionage internally. On the Windows system, the registry is a source of evidence against the cyber criminal as it maintains the details of the activity on the system. The digital forensic investigation of the Windows registry helps in collecting forensic information relevant to the case. The registry maintains a very large amount of system and user related information. In order to gather the potential evidence about the malicious activities of the user, the forensic investigator is needed to search the entire registry; resulting in the wastage of the time and the effort. This raises the need for an evidence collection and analysis methodology to identify, extract and analyse the evidence specifically related to the user activities on the system. After considering the existing research, this paper suggests a framework with the improved evidence collection and analysis methodology to aid in the process of digital forensic investigation of registry for identifying the potential malicious insider.