Zooming into the pandemic! A forensic analysis of the Zoom Application

The global pandemic of COVID-19 has turned the spotlight on video conferencing applications like never before. In this critical time, applications such as Zoom have experienced a surge in its user base jump over the 300 million daily mark (ZoomBlog, 2020). The increase in use has led malicious actors to exploit the application, and in many cases perform Zoom Bombings. Therefore forensically examining Zoom is inevitable. Our work details the primary disk, network, and memory forensic analysis of the Zoom video conferencing application. Results demonstrate it is possible to find users\u27 critical information in plain text and/or encrypted/encoded, such as chat messages, names, email addresses, passwords, and much more through network captures, forensic imaging of digital devices, and memory forensics. Furthermore we elaborate on interesting anti-forensics techniques employed by the Zoom application when contacts are deleted from the Zoom application\u27s contact list

Educational use cases from a shared exploration of e-books and iPads

E-books and e-book readers are becoming increasingly widely available, particularly for the general reader, and there have been many studies on their adoption. However, less is known about their use for educational and academic purposes. We report here on work carried out on e-books and e-book applications using iPads by academic and teaching staff. After considering pedagogical issues and reporting survey results, we identify a spiral of six key use case areas for e-books. This spiral of use cases moves from basic e-book use, through situational reading, e-books and learning, using multiple learning resources, collaborative/group learning, to e-book production. We discuss each of these use case areas and provide guidelines that will be of interest to practitioners and researchers alike

Cloud law and contract negotiation

The main characteristics of cloud computing services are explained and the clauses typically included in contracts between suppliers and customers of such services are discussed. Storing data on a cloud service can be more comfortable for an organization and cheaper than local storage, but it involves several risks. Recommendations are given on how to negotiate contracts. A list of questions to be asked of cloud service suppliers is provided so that a potential client can take an informed decision and avoid unpleasant surprises

Fan fiction, fandoms, and literature: or, why it’s time to pay attention to fan fiction

The internet has revolutionized how we interact with the world around us. We now have access to information, creations, and people on such a scale previously impossible. A direct result of the rise of the internet age is the growing popularity and visibility of fandoms and their creation and dissemination of derivative works, such as fan fiction. While fan fiction in its modern form can easily be traced back to the early days of Star Trek and fan made zines, it is now perhaps the most visible and well known fan creation. Fan fiction has evolved from the expansions or reimaginings of the source text to involve the wide-scale participation and communication amongst fans through the writing, reading, and reviewing of fan fiction. This gift culture allows people to work together to produce something that reflects who they are and what they desire at that particular point in time, often giving once unexplored insight into a range of interpretations and interactions with the original text. As fan fiction and fan culture become more mainstream, fan fiction as an accepted form of writing will continue to challenge the writing process and how consumers interact with a text and an author

A Survey of Social Network Forensics

Social networks in any form, specifically online social networks (OSNs), are becoming a part of our everyday life in this new millennium especially with the advanced and simple communication technologies through easily accessible devices such as smartphones and tablets. The data generated through the use of these technologies need to be analyzed for forensic purposes when criminal and terrorist activities are involved. In order to deal with the forensic implications of social networks, current research on both digital forensics and social networks need to be incorporated and understood. This will help digital forensics investigators to predict, detect and even prevent any criminal activities in different forms. It will also help researchers to develop new models / techniques in the future. This paper provides literature review of the social network forensics methods, models, and techniques in order to provide an overview to the researchers for their future works as well as the law enforcement investigators for their investigations when crimes are committed in the cyber space. It also provides awareness and defense methods for OSN users in order to protect them against to social attacks

Estudio cualitativo de la relación de las leyes y la pericia informática en el Ecuador

Resumen: El presente trabajo analiza cualitativamente las leyes vigentes en el Ecuador relacionadas a los procesos de la pericia informática. Para aquello, se estudia los pasos empleados por un perito de la Policía Nacional en el desarrollo de los casos de delito informático, suscitados en el periodo 2012-2014, que implican la evidencia digital en: disco duros, cuentas de correo electrónico, redes sociales y motor de base datos. Apartir de los casos analizados, se puede concluir que la ley contempla una mayor cantidad de artículos relacionados a las bases de datos. Sin embargo, se tendría que analizar otros tipos de evidencia digital tales como: documentos de ofimática, imágenes digitales, ficheros de registros de actividad, memoria volátil, entre otros. Palabras Clave: Pericia Informática, evidencia digital, perito informático, Código Orgánico Integral Penal (COIP)

The question concerning the sustaining support of digital objects

This is a text printed on paper. I have written it using a computer.You might read this text in re-digitalized form, as a PDF file. In this case, you see it as the image of the document it became; it exists as a picture of itself. The pages in a PDF-file are not tangible (Gittelman, Paper Knowledge 114ff). However, if you are indeed reading this text in digital form, there will have to be some tangible thing making you see the image of this document. Some thing is functioning as an interface right now. Although I do not know exactly what this thing is, I know for certain that there is something here, slipping your mind as you read this text. This knowledge and this slipping away is what this thesis is about. This thesis aims to question the sustaining support of digital objects. I try to challenge the habitualization towards digital devices, the forgetting of the physical interface that leads to the supposition of digital immateriality, by making the com- puter apparent as an absurd thing that escapes language. Leaning on Heidegger’s »Question Concerning Technology« and Mel Bochner’s mural stating that »No Thought Exists Without a Sustaining Support«, I seek to position myself among these strange and aloof digital things and their effects. I attempt to encircle the ungraspable realm of the computer’s black box by explicating its formal material (Kirschenbaum), which results from the fundamentally irresolvable tension between the metaphysical idea of the Turing machine and the worldly stuff that embodies and performs it. First, I approach this stuff through language. I introduce three metaphors to compare the computer to other worldly things: ruins (considering the existence of the machine, its resting body, and the expectations and promises it entails), vessels (thinking about its function), and windows (reflecting the notion of digital transparency and contingency). Then, I verbally enter the computer, contemplating how its mechanism depends on an act of inscription, a physical in-formation of material, and how its effects can therefore also be understood as writing, as embodied information. However as computing has become ubiquitous, seamless and powerful enough to super- sede the speed of thinking (Kittler S), it has become increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to phenomenologically grasp any friction resulting from this embodiment in the workings of the machines as they operate. In my practice, I physically grapple with this highly evasive body of digital media. Building on the metaphors and terminology I establish, and looking for comparisons between Bochner’s post-conceptual sensibility and post-digital ideas, I aim to evoke the things on which I rely but that lie outside of language: I attempt 3 4 blank with a knowing futility to (re-)insert myself in the processes of digital translation. I slow the effects of the computer down, I empty out its already silent interfaces, aiming to re-present it. I constellate and associate pieces of work, suggesting a grammar rather than a narrative, in order to listen to the »language of things« (Benjamin)

Aaron Swartz on Wikipedia. Vol. III : ‘Peter Stearns’ to ‘Fred Kaplan’

editor's and technical notes from p. 18