Automatically Unaware: Using Data Analytics to Detect Physiological Markers of Cybercrime

Abstract

Cybercrime investigation is reliant on availability of adequate and valid digital artifacts useable for reconstructing security incidents or triangulating other available information to make it useful. Various operational artifacts of computer systems, networks and software have been studied and gradually applied as forensic evidence. However the scope of studies on human-generated artifacts as forensic evidence has been limited mostly focusing on surveillance images, with DNA deposits being widely studied via older forensic fields. We present the case that further focus on human-centric evidence in form of physiological measurements is useful in triangulating other evidence as well as in making some direct inferences. In this concept paper: we pair electroencephalography (EEG) with change point detection algorithms to conceptually model the acquisition and processing of EEG signals into forensic artifacts; propose continuous data reduction and packaging to keep the system forensic-ready; suggest a schema for validating such artifacts towards their applicability as forensic evidence; and model a study to be used in testing the conceptual model. This work contributes to cybersecurity research by highlighting human-generated artifacts as a forensic big data resource and presenting a methodology for harnessing the data to turn it into useful information.