Cloud Forensics: Identifying the Major Issues and Challenges (original) (raw)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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This chapter aims to be a high-level introduction into the fundamental concepts of both digital forensic investigations and cloud computing for non-experts in one or both areas. Once fundamental concepts are established, this work begins to examine cloud computing security-related questions, specifically how past security challenges are inherited or solved by cloud computing models, as well as new security challenges that are unique to cloud environments. Next, an analysis is given of the challenges and opportunities cloud computing brings to digital forensic investigations. Finally, the Integrated Digital Investigation Process model is used as a guide to illustrate considerations and challenges during an investigation involving cloud environments.
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Cloud Computing is on demand network, data access anywhere anytime. Pay per model is gaining commercial day by day. Due to the popularity of cloud and all time availability, the security issue is again the main concern nowadays. The client don't know where the data is stored and in which datacenter. The distributed nature of cloud is again the point of security in cloud and also gives the chance to malicious activities to be carried out very easily. Cloud computing presents the abstract layer to user for storing their confidential data hiding their architectural details. Due to this whenever the malicious activity happens in cloud, it becomes very difficult to trace. This gives rise to new area of research in the field of digital forensics that has unique challenges and opportunities in context of cloud. This paper presents the detail study of malicious activity that can be carried out in cloud and with the help of some case studies and detailed methodology of proposed architecture earlier mentioned in the paper.
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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: 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.
International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications
Digital forensics is a class of forensic science interested with the use of digital information produced, stored and transmitted by various digital devices as source of evidence in investigations and legal proceedings. Digital forensics can be split up to several classes such as computer forensics, network forensics, mobile forensics, cloud computing forensics, and IoT forensics. In recent years, cloud computing has emerged as a popular computing model in various areas of human life. However, cloud computing systems lack support for computer forensic investigations. The main goal of digital forensics is to prove the presence of a particular document in a given digital device. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of various frameworks and solutions in all classes of digital forensics with a focus on cloud forensics. We start by discussing different forensics classes, their frameworks, limitations and solutions. Then we focus on the methodological aspect and existing challenges of cloud forensics. Moreover, the detailed comparison discusses drawbacks, differences and similarities of several suggested cloud computing frameworks providing future research directions.
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.