Forensic investigation of cooperative storage cloud service : Symform as a case study

Yee Yang, T; Dehghantanha, A; Choo, R; Conti, M; Dargahi, T

Abstract

Researchers envisioned the Storage as a Service (StaaS) as an effective solution
to the distributed management of digital data, since it provides an inexpensive
and reliable online storage which is accessible by different types of computer
devices (e.g., mobile and desktop). However, the proliferation of cloud storage
services has fuelled concerns over privacy and security (e.g., dissemination
of malware and unauthorised access of private information). Together with
the growing of StaaS proposals, cloud storage is attracting the attention
of research, although cooperative storage cloud forensic is relatively underexplored as this is a fairly new concept. Using Symform as a case study,
we seek to determine the data remnants from the use of cooperative cloud
storage services. In particular, we consider both mobile devices and personal
computers running various popular operating systems, namely Windows 8.1,
Mac OS X Mavericks 10.9.5, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, iOS 7.1.2, and Android
KitKat 4.4. Potential artefacts recovered during the research include data
relating to the installation and uninstallation of the cloud applications, login to and log-off from symform account using the client application, file
synchronisation (download, upload, and delete), as well as their timestamp
information. This research contributes to an in-depth understanding of
the types of terrestrial artefacts that are likely to remain after the use of
cooperative storage cloud on client devices.

Citation

Yee Yang, T., Dehghantanha, A., Choo, R., Conti, M., & Dargahi, T. (2016). Forensic investigation of cooperative storage cloud service : Symform as a case study. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 62(3), 641-654. https://doi.org/10.1111/1556-4029.13271

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 29, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Nov 26, 2016
• Publication Date: Nov 26, 2016
• Deposit Date: Nov 1, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 25, 2017
• Journal: Journal of Forensic Sciences
• Print ISSN: 0022-1198
• Electronic ISSN: 1556-4029
• Publisher: Wiley
• Volume: 62
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 641-654
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1556-4029.13271
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1556-4029.13271
• Related Public URLs: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1556-4029