The role of criminal profiling in the computer forensics process

Abstract

In today’s increasingly complex world, we find ourselves at a rather unique societal and cultural cross roads. At no other time in history has society been so dependent on technology and its various offshoots and incarnations 1 1 There may be an argument that the dawn of the Industrial Revolution placed society in a similar situation. . Almost every facet of our day-to-day lives is impacted to some extent by technology (e.g., email, Internet, online banking, digital music, etc.). This reliance and to some extent dependence on technology, has had a ripple effect on other less obvious areas of society ( Rogers, 2001; Schneier, 2002; Schwartau, 2000). One such area is law enforcement and, more specifically, criminal investigations ( Kruse and Heiser, 2002). Historically, criminal investigations relied on such concepts as physical evidence, eyewitnesses, and confessions. Today, the criminal investigator must recognize that a vast amount of evidence will be in the electronic or digital form. The crime scene may consist of a computer system or network as opposed to the traditional ‘physical’ scene ( Kruse and Heiser, 2002). The eyewitness of today and tomorrow may be a computer generated ‘log file’.