Computer forensics

The discipline involves similar techniques and principles to data recovery, but with additional guidelines and practices designed to create a legal audit trail.

In the early 1980s, personal computers became more accessible to consumers, leading to their increased use in criminal activity (for example, to help commit fraud).

[2][3] Today, computer forensics is used to investigate a wide variety of crimes, including child pornography, fraud, espionage, cyberstalking, murder, and rape.

Forensic techniques and expert knowledge are used to explain the current state of a digital artifact, such as a computer system, storage medium (e.g., hard disk or CD-ROM), or an electronic document (e.g., an email message or JPEG image).

[5] They describe the discipline as "more of an art than a science," indicating that forensic methodology is backed by flexibility and extensive domain knowledge.

However, while several methods can be used to extract evidence from a given computer, the strategies used by law enforcement are fairly rigid and lack the flexibility found in the civilian world.

In the United Kingdom, examiners often follow Association of Chief Police Officers guidelines that help ensure the authenticity and integrity of evidence.

This differs from early forensic practices, when a lack of specialized tools often required investigators to work on live data.

The computer forensics lab is a secure environment where electronic data can be preserved, managed, and accessed under controlled conditions, minimizing the risk of damage or alteration to the evidence.

When seizing evidence, if a machine is still active, volatile data stored solely in RAM may be lost if not recovered before shutting down the system.

[citation needed] RAM data can sometimes be recovered after power loss, as the electrical charge in memory cells dissipates slowly.

Lower temperatures and higher voltages increase the chance of recovery, but it is often impractical to implement these techniques in field investigations.