Cloud forensics: An overview (original) (raw)

Cloud Forensics

Advances in Digital Forensics VII, 2011

Cloud computing may well become one of the most transformative technologies in the history of computing. Cloud service providers and customers have yet to establish adequate forensic capabilities that could support investigations of criminal activities in the cloud. This paper discusses the emerging area of cloud forensics, and highlights its challenges and opportunities.

Cloud Forensics: Identifying the Major Issues and Challenges

One of the most important areas in the developing field of cloud computing is the way that investigators conduct researches in order to reveal the ways that a digital crime took place over the cloud. This area is known as cloud forensics. While great research on digital forensics has been carried out, the current digital forensic models and frameworks used to conduct a digital investigation don’t meet the requirements and standards demanded in cloud forensics due to the nature and characteristics of cloud computing. In parallel, issues and challenges faced in traditional forensics are different to the ones of cloud forensics. This paper addresses the issues of the cloud forensics challenges identified from review conducted in the respective area and moves to a new model assigning the aforementioned challenges to stages.

Cloud Forensics: A Review of Challenges, Solutions and Open Problems

2015 International Conference on Cloud Computing (ICCC), 2015

Cloud computing is a promising next generation computing paradigm which offers significant economic benefits to both commercial and public entities. Due to the unique combination of characteristics that cloud computing introduce, including; on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity and measured service, digital investigations face various technical, legal and organizational challenges to keep up with current developments in the field of cloud computing. There are plenty of issues that need to be resolved in order to perform a proper digital investigation in the cloud environment. This paper examines the challenges in cloud forensics that are identified in the current research literature. Furthermore it explores the current research proposals and technical solutions addressed in the respective research. Ultimately, it highlights the open problems that need further efforts to be tackled.

Cloud Computing Forensics; Challenges and Future Perspectives: A Review

Asian Journal of Research in Computer Science

Cloud computing has become increasingly popular in recent years, evolving into a computing paradigm that is both cost-effective and efficient. It has the potential to be one of the technologies that has had the most significant impact on computing throughout its history. Regrettably, cloud service providers and their customers have not yet developed major forensic tools that can assist with the investigation of criminal conduct that occurs in the cloud. Because it is difficult to prevent cloud vulnerabilities and criminal targeting, it is necessary to be aware of how digital forensic investigations of the cloud may be carried out. This is because cloud vulnerabilities and criminal targeting are difficult to avoid. In this context, the current study examines current and future trends in cloud forensics, methodology for cloud forensics, and cloud forensic tools. In addition, the study also looks at cloud forensic approaches.

Cloud Technology and the Challenges for Forensics Investigators

DEStech Transactions on Computer Science and Engineering, 2017

Cloud computing is an recent technology offers a cheap and almost limitless computing power and storage space for data which can be leveraged to commit either new or old crimes and host related traces. This paper aims to review and discuss the challenges for digital forensics in cloud that we cannot seize the physical hardware which runs various applications in cloud. Cloud forensics is difficult. because there are challenges with multi-tenant hosting, synchronization problems and techniques for segregating the data in the logs. Cloud forensic is the process of identifying, preserving, analyzing and presenting digital evidence in a manner that is legally acceptable. The complexity of forensics and investigations in a cloud environment is broadly related to the various challenges which are discussed in the paper. We came to know that the main challenge in cloud forensic is of data acquisition. It is important to know exactly where the data is located and actually acquiring it. If Cloud Service Providers practice to preserve volatile data, the loss of important artifacts, which could be potentially crucial evidence, can be made avoided.

A Review of Cloud Forensics Issues & Challenges

Cloud Computing is becoming most sought after and desired service among organizations as it can share entities such as, process units, storage and software and promises simplicity and delivering services based on virtualization technologies. Convenience, availability, elasticity, speed, large storage capacity, scalability, and on-demand network access are some of the key features of cloud computing. The surge in adoption of cloud computing solutions makes it inevitable for digital forensics not to follow since considerable & extensive potential security risks girdle this new technology. This paper provides a review of cloud forensics including the issues and existing challenges in order to give better future prospects and also offers some steps to be taken to overcome these challenges.

Cloud forensics: A research perspective

2013

Cloud computing and digital forensics are both developing topics and researching these topics requires an understanding of the main aspects of both cloud computing and digital forensics. In cloud computing it is necessary not only to understand its characteristics and the different services and deployment models but also to survey the underpinning elements of cloud computing such as virtualization and the distributed computing which are important to identify its impact on current digital forensics guidelines and procedures.

Cloud Forensics: Drawbacks in Current Methodologies and Proposed Solution

Cloud Computing is a heavily evolving domain in technology. Many public and private entities are shifting their workstations on the cloud due to its robust, remote, virtual environment. Due to the enormity of this domain, it has become increasingly easier to carry out any sort of malicious attacks on such cloud platforms. There is a very low research done to develop the theory and practice of cloud forensics. One of the main challenges includes the inability to collect enough evidence from each and every subscriber of a Cloud Service Provider(CSP) and thus not being able to trace out the roots of the malicious activity committed. In this paper we compare past research done in this field and address the gaps and loopholes in the frameworks previously suggested. Overcoming these, our system/framework facilitates the collection, organization, and thereby the analysis of the evidence sought, hence preserving the essential integrity of the sensitive and volatile data.

Cloud Forensics: An Overall Research Perspective

International Journal of Scientific Research in Network Security and Communication, 2018

We are aware that Cloud Computing evolves as a transformative and potentially helpful field for future generations on account of its several economic benefits in every domain including commercial, public, governmental, organizational etc. However on account of increase in the digital crimes and a number of security threats over the cloud environment, works related with investigations over the cloud, recovering of evidence and systematic forensics methodologies need to be focused upon. Cloud Forensics is a relevant field that works on all of these issues. This paper gives an overall research perspective of Cloud Forensics including its overview, need, process, challenges, logging measures and forensic tools. With the help of certain forensic tools, cloud investigation processes have been eased. On the other hand, there are certain challenges encountered in the cloud forensics domain. The paper also gives an insight regarding the broad future scope and areas associated with the Cloud Forensics area.

Forensics framework for cloud computing

Computers & Electrical Engineering, 2017

The popularity of cloud computing has been on the rise in recent years, as cloud resources are not only shared by many users but can be allocated on demand. A recent survey reports success of the cyber criminals in using cloud computing technology for fraudulent activities, due to its essential characteristics and the lack of suitable digital forensic techniques for the cloud environment. While mitigating cloud crime, investigators face several challenges and issues dealing with cloud forensics. In this paper, the challenges faced by forensic investigators are highlighted. Most of the research work deals with the identification of challenges in cloud forensics and the proposed solutions reported in literature depends on Cloud Service Provider (CSP) for forensic investigation. The dependence on CSP includes the collection of data for the forensics process and there may be a chance of altering data that affects the entire investigation process. For mitigating the dependency on CSP, a new model for collecting forensic evidence outside the cloud environment is developed.