Security and Privacy in the Computer Forensics Context

Today computers are used in numerous day- to-day activities as a communications tool. In this regard several different applications are used to generate and store important documents. These documents contain vital data to the user and at times to an investigator in the event a crime is committed using that computer. The user would expect reasonable security precautions to be in place to protect the data on the computer, especially when the computer is connected to the Internet. The user with deceptive goals in mind would want to hide information where as a Computer Forensics investigator would want to find out the hidden information for evidence. In this paper we examine several security features that are commonly used and how such precautions are thwarted by Computer Forensics tools and their impact on privacy.