If you’re a white-paper junkie like me Open (re)Sources is a virtual goldmine. According to the site’s author:

“OPEN(re)SOURCES is a collection of current information gathered from across the Web. Resources include information relevant National Security Intelligence found in Open Source reports, analyses, briefings, articles, etc. Topics regularly cover terrorism (both domestic and foreign), Cybersecurity, Political and Military Analyses, Environmental Issues/Impacts and Analytic Methods and techniques. Items will be posted every Thursday. While the blog posts reflect a date range, resources within those posts may be older than the indicated range; the range purely reflects the time period in which I found the resources.”

I discovered it via Analysts Corner, also a great resource.

Anyone looking for a primer on Internet Investigations will want to read the white-paper written by Todd Shipley of Vere Software called “Collecting Legally Defensible Online Evidence: Creating a standard framework for Internet Forensic Investigations.” It provides some very good fundamental points on the collection, examination, analysis and reporting of online evidence. The document was produced by a software company but it is vendor neutral and couched in U.S. case law. The references in the back of the paper are also very useful.

I would suggest that the framework provided in this document, augmented with some of the more recent developments in the legal and academic communities dealing with this field (such as protection of the identities of third-parties who are captured or referenced in on-line evidence that are not parties to the “offence”, developments in the law with respect to evidence obtained from social networking sites and Web 2.0 platforms, privacy concerns in different jurisdictions internationally (admittedly as a Canadian I always like to see Canadian content included) etc.) would be very valuable….any takers?

Also, can we solve the debate once and for all? Is it “Internet Forensic Investigations” or “Forensic Internet Investigations”? My vote is for the later.

….as much as the next investigator and this is a good detective story.

On Friday I received my regular email from Rob Holmes, PI’s Knockoff Report which is a collection of news stories relating to intellectual property fraud and counterfeiting. By reviewing this report and the reports produced by the International Chamber of Commerce’s BASCAP initiative you can get a pretty good sense of trends in counterfeiting and piracy globally.

Friday’s edition of the Knockoff Report included a story relating to an investigation conducted by Holmes and his colleagues as opposed to investigations conducted by other people or policing agencies. The story was about how Activision Blizzard’s Modern Warfare 2 was comprimised prior to its official release date. Holmes and his colleagues Kris Buckner, Eric Rosaler and Jason Holmes were alerted to the incident by Activision Blizzard and their investigation began with a posting on Craigslist which led to a brand protection purchase, back to a chat room for another issue and eventually that led to some arrests.

I don’t want to spoil the story so I recommend that folks read it for themselves.

Students: In session we talk about how Internet investigations and physical investigations must compliment and support each other, this is a perfect example of how that works. Nice work gents.

Occasionally when I’m speaking to another investigator about possible illicit activities that can occur in virtual item markets or RMT I get the question “but why would anybody pay money for a virtual item?” My usual answer is “well, in a sense it doesn’t matter why, the point is that they do and that is why there is a market for these things.”

The truth is that I didn’t really have a great answer, but I’m starting finding some sources that have provided some very good insight. The first place I would suggest any reader to stop is an article on the Virtual Economy Research Network called “Community dynamics that create demand for virtual goods: case Habbo” written by Vili Lehdonvirta. After that, download the article called “Virtual Consumerism: Case Habbo Hotel” written by Mr. Lehdonvirta, Terhi-Anna Wilska, and Mikael Johnson. This is a pre-print version of the article and it is expected to be in the journal Information, Communication & Society vol. 12 no. 7.

The article is good because well, the article is just good. But the article is also very good because of the numerous sources cited. If you want to continue digging on the subject, there are sources there

Here is the problem I’m trying to solve. Lately I have had numerous cases where evidence is found in online video and in audio podcasts. I needed a way to archive and analyze this material, at least the verbal part of it.

My proposed solution is to use a speech to text software to transcribe the audio portion of the video (or the podcast…obviously) to text.

Hopefully this will allow me to provide my clients with text to accompany the video or audio recording. I can also take portions of the transcript and use it in my reports/briefs, etc. Furthermore where certain keywords are of interest I can do keyword searches on them.

I’m expecting some hiccups. The software’s ability to do the transcription is going to depend on the audio quality. If I’m spending a lot of time doing corrections on the transcript then it kind of defeats at least part of the purpose.

If the community has any better ideas, I’m certainly open to them. Please post or send me a note offline.

Corporations wishing to examine their current anti-corruption policies may want to review the latest issue of Management Ethics, produced by the Canadian Centre for Ethics and Corporate Policy. The cover story reminds readers that “bribing foreign public officials in order to obtain or retain an advantage in the course of business was made a criminal offence on February 14, 1999″.

The six “test” questions are simple but important considerations for any corporation that does business with Government, anywhere. I would encourage you to give this one page article a read. Further resources on the subject can be found on the Centre’s website as well as the website for Transparency International which provides ratings on corruption levels in various countries.

No…not video piracy, literally a video about poaching posted on YouTube.

According to Global TV and other sources three men have raised the ire of both Government authorities and animal rights groups for pulling over to the side of the road in some unknown area in Saskatchewan or Alberta and shooting at ducklings in a pond. They posted the video on YouTube and it is alleged to have had over 20,000 downloads.

According to the article the birds are said to be protected by the Migratory Birds Protection Act and therefore the offenders are wanted by both Provincial Authorities and Environment Canada. There is a reward offered for information that leads to the individual’s capture.

Last year I wrote a few posts on issues relating to capturing picture and video evidence on the Internet. My belief is that the relevance of these technologies will extend far beyond the traditional (albeit terrible) realms of child pornography and image copyright violation; and will become much more prevalent in other types of crimes.

It appears that it’s happened recently in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Yesterday a man from the area plead guilty to one count of “unlawfully advising, encouraging and promoting a prizefight” and two counts of “being present at a prizefight as an aide, second, surgeon, umpire, backer or reporter.”

According to an article in the Chronicle Herald the he lead a group calling itself “East Coast Street Fights” which organized unsanctioned fight clubs to settle disputes. The group would then post videos of the fights on Facebook and YouTube. In fact the article infers that the fights were organized on the group’s Facebook wall.

It would be interesting to learn if the police authenticated the video on the Internet from the subject’s video recording device initially or if they found the video on the Internet first and went looking for witnesses and the tool that the subject used to make the recording.

Other sources in the media indicate that the organizer received a year of probation, but interestingly a quick Google search on the group indicates that the footage is still available on line.

Steven Davis‘ book “Protecting Games” is due out in a week. His blog PlayNoEvil is always interesting so I am definitely looking forward to the book.

I always find it insightful to listen to discussions from people of different generations on how they use or think about technologies. It helps those of us involved in investigating incidents involving the Internet to think in terms of a user’s experience as opposed to our own experience.

Enter the IA Podcast. I find Jeff Park’s work around usability and information architecture interesting anyway, but I find this particular series of posts/podcasts to be very useful for those of us involved in looking at how people might use the Internet and other networking technologies to connect, conduct business or entertain themselves; and how those activities might be used in the cause, prevention or investigation of crime/civil incidents.

During the first part of Park’s series called “Generations and Technology” he interviews a Grade 6 class about the technologies they use and how they think about them. The interview is informal, entertaining and very insightful, especially if you don’t have younger kids around that would expose you to this kind of human-technology interaction. For example: “instant Messenger is boring…” was one of my favourite quotes.

I’m looking forward to the next session in the series where he interviews high school students.

This brings me to another noteworthy item from this week. Toronto Constable Scott Mills has earned a reputation for his use of Web 2.0 technologies such as YouTube and Facebook to reach out to Toronto’s communities, especially youth and speaking to them through the technology mediums they regularly use.

Not only is his work recognized here in Canada, but his speech on the subject was recognized as a highlight at an Interpol conference in Johannesburg in November 2008.