Semantic integration and correlation of digital evidences in forensic investigations

Abstract

The growing adoption of digital and computer-related technologies has led to the increase of computer crimes occurrences. Today we are exposed to a great number of threats that involve IT technologies, such as terrorism or cyber-scams through Internet, child pornography, espionage and tampering of computer equipment. Digital investigations play a leading role to guarantee a legal use of digital technologies, as well to search for evidences left by the author of a crime. Digital investigations often combine a wide span of skills and require the adoption of different tools and techniques in order to capture, store and analyze evidences from a Computer Crime Scene. The lack of integration and interoperability between these tools protract the analysis process and pauperize presentation results for non-technical parties (from legal, academic or business areas). This work presents a method, based on Semantic Web technologies, to integrate, correlate and query different sources of forensic data with the goal of more valuable reconstruction of a case.