I went for a walk in the Pentlands yesterday with Steven and Jason, which turned into a 3 hour adventure in knee-high snow with plenty of bemused sheep staring at us. We totally lost track of the path and ended up walking through streams, swampy mud and ridiculous amounts of snow. Along the way we walked through an MOD military training area called Castlelaw, and found loads of spent casings on the ground.

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For one of my courses I have to write an essay on a topic related to computer forensics that hasn't been taught in class. I have chosen to write mine on criminology of computer crime, and it's so interesting! If you want a really good overview of criminology then read the following two PDFs - Criminological Theory and The Criminology of Computer Crime. I will be summarizing some of the things written here.

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Sorry for not blogging recently, I have been writing a ridiculously long piece of coursework (7,441 words at 18 pages) on malware and virtual machines which was due in today.

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In today’s forensic science theory lectures we got taught that not only is DNA not unique, but there is an actual chance of two people having the same DNA profile. The lecturer first explained the birthday paradox, and then tried to explain it with DNA and got me terribly confused with what numbers go where in what equations. So I’ve read up on it and will now try and explain the birthday paradox and why there are potentially thousands of doppelgangers in the world.

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In my introductory lecture of Fundamentals of Forensic Science, the lecturer spoke about the problems currently faced in the field. Forensic “science” is not always an exact science. Things such as drug analysis and DNA comparison is exact and very scientific, but clothing damage, blood stain patterns and scene reconstruction is not. It requires a lot of domain knowledge, common sense and just a little scientific method. They are, however, very useful no matter how much actual science goes into them. There are three other problems faced – 1) not enough research is happening in the field; 2) things are treated as unique when they are not and 3) confirmation bias.

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Long ago when forensics started out, each police department or private investigation company would do things in their own way. Most didn't have a computer forensics expert and used their IT department or nearest computer geek instead, who would have had varying degrees of expertise. This led to evidence being mistreated and people called expert witnesses when really they weren't. To make sure things were done properly, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) set up guidelines called Good Practice Guide for Computer-Based Electronic Evidence on how to deal with digital artefacts (computers, mobile phones etc) so that they are properly looked after and admissible in court.

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In preparation for my masters in Forensic Informatics I decided to read an AS and A-Level Chemistry book. Only GSCE knowledge of chemistry is needed (which is as far as I got with the subject), but the masters in Forensics (which I will be sharing half the courses with) require A-Level chemistry and a degree with some chemistry in it such as chemistry, biochemistry or chemical engineering. This seems a little weird, so I thought I'd read the book in case they expect me to actually remember anything I was taught 7 years ago. Here are a couple of interesting things I found in the book:

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