Computer Forensics Investigator

Whether you need computer, mobile phone or online evidence for a court matter or simply for your peace of mind, Lyonswood’s Computer Forensics professionals are accredited experts and can help you today. Our computer forensics investigator teamassists individuals, companies, law firms and government entities when digital evidence of any kind is required for just about any purpose.

Lyonswood’s investigators can help guide you towards the outcomes you seek. While other forensic computer analyst firms may have experts in the area of computer forensic science, in certain cases, you will need to supplement the digital evidence gathered with surveillance of a suspect, civil search orders and/or other legal action. Lyonswood has expertise as a computer forensic investigator as well as in a range ofother areas of investigations and has legal contacts who are cognisant of the relevant cyber law. Contact us today for a free discussion about yourcomputer forensics investigator requirements and let us help you resolve your matter.

Gather evidence through our computer forensic services.

You may need proof for a criminal matter, or a civil matter or you may have experienced fraud at the hands of an online scammer. A computer, phone or online investigation could be needed to gather evidence of employee misconduct, anonymous defamation or threats or harassment from an unknown email account. Your computer may have been infected with spyware or malware or your business network may have been penetrated by hackers. Australia ranks fourth highest for cybercrime in the world according to a recent study – and there’s no sign that this rate of criminality will decrease anytime soon.

The good news is that cybercrime often leaves a trace. As an early provider of computer forensic services in Australia, Lyonswood has been a part of the evolution of cyber investigations, including in cases before the courts. Evidence gathered by Lyonswood in a forensic matter was used for a successful Supreme Court action where our client was awarded damages and costs on an indemnity basis. Lyonswood’s evidence has been used in courts on multiple occasions. You may not need to go to court to get the outcome required but you should be comforted in the knowledge that our expert’s evidence is of such a standard that it will bear scrutiny if challenged.

Contact us today for a free discussion about how a computer forensics investigator can help to resolve your problem.

Lyonswood Forensics Team: Computer Hacking and Computer Forensics Investigator

Forensic science involves the analysis of a given set of information or data in such a controlled manner that similar analysis carried out by an independent but similarly qualified expert would yield an identical outcome. Computer forensics is the application of this forensic approach in circumstances where analysis of computer and digital hardware and / or software is required for evidentiary purposes.

Digital devices of any type can be excellent repositories of evidence. If an event occurs in your business or personal life that could lead to any type of civil dispute or criminal prosecution later on then you should immediately consider whether you might have access to any form of digital evidence that would help resolve the issue. Computers, mobile devices (phones, tablets, etc), wearables, car computers, routers and other devices contain data that might make all the difference. Alternatively, or additionally, the accounts you access on these devices (email accounts, social media account, accounts that store GPS data, etc) could contain valuable evidence.

If you have any device or account that could contain evidence, it is important to immediately contact a forensic expert. Using a regular IT consultant or an Apple shop employee to endeavour to help will potentially corrupt, change or remove the evidence you seek, leaving you at a disadvantage. A forensic expert concentrates first on preserving and documenting any evidence so that there can be no debate over the data that was gathered later on. This is part of the forensic process and ensures the evidence is as objective as possible.

SECURING DIGITAL EVIDENCE PRIOR TO FORENSIC COMPUTERS ANALYSIS

Because digital evidence can easily be overwritten, corrupted, deleted or lost, it is very important to document it forensically as soon as possible. One of the problems Lyonswood comes across when assisting clients with the acquisition of forensic digital data is that the data suspected of containing vital evidence has not been secured quickly enough by the client, nor in a fashion that will enable us to adhere to the forensic process. Always contact a computer forensic investigator as soon as you become aware that you may need to document evidence.

If it is a possibility that you are subject to monitoring, hacking or some other form of compromise, you should be careful about the way in which you contact an investigator. You do not want to alert a hacker or stalker to the fact that you are investigating him or her so when you reach out for help, you should do so from a safe device or phone, ensuring that any devices you use are not within earshot and ensuring that you do not use any accounts that could be subject to monitoring. It is a good idea to use a friend or relative’s phone or email account if you believe that is safe. Alerting a hacker to the fact that you are aware of the compromise may give a hacker the opportunity to contaminate evidence or take more drastic action against you.

MOST COMMON TYPES OF INTERNET FRAUD/DECEPTION REPORTED TO LYONSWOOD

PHISHING: The act of tricking someone into giving a fraudster confidential information, or tricking them into doing something they wouldn’t do, or internet fraud that aims to steal valuable information such as credit cards, social security numbers, user IDs and passwords.

Case study: A young woman was about to divulge her bank account details to a male she had become involved with on a chat line and her father became suspicious, so they approached Lyonswood with their case. She was convinced that he was a Russian businessman living in London who was seeking a relationship with a view to marriage. She had been speaking to him over the phone, and to demonstrate his genuineness and to give her confidence in his honesty, he had sent her his U.K. driver’s license and a copy of his Russian Passport. He told her that he would send her $10,000.00 so that she could travel to the U.K. and meet him. Then, he asked her for her passport and driver’s license so that he could be certain who she said she was and to give him confidence that when he deposited the money into her account it was going to a real person and not a fraudster. He told her that if she sent her bank details he would make a direct deposit. He also sent her his address and his business address, which both seemed genuine when the woman checked them herself.

As can be understood after becoming emotionally invested in this relationship, it took a lot to get the woman on our side as she did not wish to look stupid and, we suspect, didn’t want her heart broken. To begin our investigation, our computer forensics investigator team requested our colleagues in the U.K. to send us details of the occupants of these addresses – they did not match up with the names she had been provided. In fact, the resident of the house was a bishop in the Anglican church. With our client still not convinced and making excuses for these discrepancies we requested a copy of a standard U.K. driver’s license. The license we were provided did not match the one she had been given and now she questioned whether different countries had different licenses – there was only one format for this type of driver’s license throughout the U.K.

There were many other discrepancies in the documents he provided her. For example, the passport photo was placed over the passport stamp and thus it was clear that the photo had been cut and pasted over an existing passport photo, probably one this fraudster had phished from another victim. This type of fraudster gathers and trades identities with other phishing fraudsters online.

Fortunately, our client had not provided her passport or driver’s license. However, she had provided her name and address details. The objective of the fraudster was to gain access to her bank account and clean it out. This fraudster was very patient and had groomed our client over many months. No doubt this person had groomed many others over that same period and our computer forensics investigator experts suspect many of those would not have been as lucky as our client.

COMPUTER FRAUD: There are many ways for fraudsters to take from you your hard-earned cash, clear out your bank accounts and even defraud you for your other assets, such as motor vehicles and boats. The way this is generally done is through convincing yet fraudulent documentation. Note: you should never e-mail documents that prove your identity such as driver’s licenses and passports. Once a clever fraudster has these, they virtually have your identity and can cut and paste photos of themselves or other persons over the existing photos or even use them and pretend they are you to defraud others.

One would hope by now that any e-mails you receive that offer large sums of money just for assisting someone to deposit some alleged fortune that has somehow come their way, are now well and truly ignored and deleted. These are generally referred to as Nigerian Scams and mostly originate out of Africa however there is a recent shift of this type of fraud to Mexico and South America.

Letters that allege they are from a bank, just because you may happen to have deposits with this bank, should also be disregarded. Let’s face it, with only 4 major banks in this country, they have a 25% chance of getting lucky when they send an unsolicited e-mail. Banks rarely send e-mails of this type, particularly ones that ask you to verify your account numbers and passwords.

The fact that someone has details about you doesn’t necessarily mean they obtained those details from you. Clever fraudsters search discarded rubbish from bins at night and steal your mail from your letter box to gain this information and if they obtain a copy of a bank statement then they most likely have your account numbers and balance. All they need then is your password. It is not uncommon for these fraudsters to scan in your stolen bank statements and send them to you via a fabricated bank e-mail complete with logos that they have cut and pasted from the internet. The really smart ones even provide a telephone number for you to call to verify that the e-mail is genuine. The phone will answer and a voice will cleverly convince you that you have in fact called your bank. Always check the number and see that it corresponds with those of your bank. If it doesn’t then it’s likely to be a fraud.

THREATS, DEFAMATION/ SLANDER & MALICIOUS ACTS

Lyonswood Investigations and Forensic Group receives regular inquiries relating to unknown email senders or anonymous social media accounts. Users of these accounts engage in criminal or civilly-actionable activities such as sending threats, posting defamatory content or engaging in blackmail. There are ways for our computer investigative specialists to seek to identify the person engaging in the improper behaviour and we have successfully identified cybercriminals previously, with the help of police and the courts.

FORENSIC COMPUTER ANALYST – DATA RECOVERY/MINING AND BREACH OF CONFIDENTIALITY

Lost data, data suspected of being copied (stolen data), data that might breach laws/confidentiality/workplace and privacy guidelines is often sought as a vital piece of evidence or information. Today, the act of industrial espionage is mostly carried out via the internet or through an employee’s malice or negligence.

Lyonswood Investigations and Forensic Group have a record of recovering data even in circumstances where the person/s responsible have attempted to cover their tracks. Lyonswood Investigations and Forensic Group’s Forensic IT and computer forensics investigator specialists have the edge on cybercriminals, employees and others who have engaged in improper conduct.

ADOLESCENT DUE DILIGENCE/ AT RISK CHILDREN

Today, children are teethed on computers. Children are using computers before they start schooling and thus become very proficient, quite often even more proficient than their parents. This is where vigilance is required and quite often not able to be provided because the parents are nowhere near as savvy as their children.

Very devious and clever criminals include those who might want to hurt your child. If you have reason to suspect your child might be exposed to one of these practices or perhaps require software to minimise exposure to these risks, Lyonswood’s computer forensics investigator team can assist you to have peace of mind.

WIRELESS NETWORK SECURITY-CONSULTANCY AND PENETRATION TESTING

Attacks on Wireless Networks

Wireless networking enables devices within a certain distance, to be able to use computing resources without being physically connected to a network. These days many devices (desktop/laptop computers, smartphones, iPhones, Blackberry) are fully dependent on wireless connectivity in order to transfer various communications and data. Devices often use mobile phone networks however when back at home or the office a local wireless network is automatically joined for continued and fast, Internet access. Wireless ‘hot spots’ are on the increase and everyone is using them to stay connected.

Once a device relies not on a physical cable but on wireless network technology the risk to security increases tremendously. With the right tools and expertise, unauthorised access can be achieved within a few minutes. If a wireless network is configured well, these attempts may still only take minutes before a successful connection is made to the network. Often once this connection is made, access is automatically gained to the whole company’s wired internal network.

Wireless networks whether they be at home or within a corporate environment, boast ranges typically of 50-100 metres. The implications of this are that an attacker could be sitting in a coffee shop down the street from the residence or office, making repeated attempts. If at first unsuccessful, an attacker can record (sniff) traffic and save it for examination and decoding later. Commonly implemented WEP, WPA2 and other encryption increases the difficulty for an attacker to infiltrate a wireless network however typical success can still be in the order of minutes.

There is a great need for wireless networks hosted at your home or office to be tested so that security can be assessed and action taken to ensure security is optimal.

Rogue Wireless Access Points

Another challenge relating to wireless networks has a different slant to it.

Just how secure is your wired network if one of your co-workers has brought into the office a wireless access point, and discretely plugged it into the wired network? This is a very simple task resulting in the wired network being accessible by any device connected to the wireless access point. Instantly, full access can be gained to the networked computers from 50 or 100 metres away!

Scanning of wired and wireless networks in the workplace or home is paramount for the ongoing security of a network, to ensure that unauthorised devices are not connecting and transmitting data from the network.

Lyonswood’s computer forensics investigator team can consult and set up your wireless network and penetration test that network to minimise risks of rogue attacks upon your systems and intellectual property.

IDENTIFYING A FRAUDSTER OR ORIGINS OF A THREAT VIA AN EMAIL ADDRESS

Lyonswoods technicians are trained in the latest techniques and the use of state-of-the-art software developed to discover the threads of evidence and imprints that these fraudsters leave behind. One of the tools we use is the software product EnCase.

EnCase Forensic software is the current industry standard in computer forensic investigation technology.

With an intuitive GUI, superior analytics, enhanced email/Internet support and a powerful scripting engine, EnCase provides investigators with a single tool, capable of conducting large-scale and complex investigations from beginning to end. Law enforcement officers, government/corporate investigators and consultants around the world benefit from the power of EnCase Forensic in a way that far exceeds any other forensic solution.

• Acquire data in a forensically sound manner using software with an unparalleled record in courts worldwide.
• Investigate and analyze multiple platforms — Windows, Linux, AIX, OS X, Solaris and more — using a single tool.
• Save days, if not weeks, of analysis time by automating complex and routine tasks with prebuilt EnScript® modules, such as Initialized Case and Event Log analysis.
• Find information despite efforts to hide, cloak or delete.
• Easily manage large volumes of computer evidence, viewing all relevant files, including “deleted” files, file slack and unallocated space.
• Transfer evidence files directly to law enforcement or legal representatives as necessary.
• Review options allow non-investigators, such as attorneys, to review evidence with ease.
• Reporting options enable quick report preparation.

Lyonswood – Our Other Services

At Lyonswood, we understand that not every situation calls for a computer forensics investigator specialisation. That’s why we offer a range of other services designed to meet your specific needs. Whether you’re looking for a background asset check on a potential business partner or trying to locate a long-lost friend, we can help. We also offer handwriting analysis services. Our private investigator Sydney team and our teams all over the country are highly trained and experienced, and we always work discreetly and confidentially. Whatever your situation, we’ll tailor our services to meet your needs.