BitTorrent Sync: First Impressions and Digital Forensic Implications

With professional and home Internet users becoming increasingly concerned with data protection and privacy, the privacy afforded by popular cloud file synchronisation services, such as Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive, is coming under scrutiny in the press. A number of these services have recently been reported as sharing information with governmental security agencies without warrants. BitTorrent Sync is seen as an alternative by many and has gathered over two million users by December 2013 (doubling since the previous month). The service is completely decentralised, offers much of the same synchronisation functionality of cloud powered services and utilises encryption for data transmission (and optionally for remote storage). The importance of understanding BitTorrent Sync and its resulting digital investigative implications for law enforcement and forensic investigators will be paramount to future investigations. This paper outlines the client application, its detected network traffic and identifies artefacts that may be of value as evidence for future digital investigations.Comment: Proc. of Digtial Forensics Research Workshop (DFRWS EU 2014

BitTorrent Sync: Network Investigation Methodology

The volume of personal information and data most Internet users find themselves amassing is ever increasing and the fast pace of the modern world results in most requiring instant access to their files. Millions of these users turn to cloud based file synchronisation services, such as Dropbox, Microsoft Skydrive, Apple iCloud and Google Drive, to enable "always-on" access to their most up-to-date data from any computer or mobile device with an Internet connection. The prevalence of recent articles covering various invasion of privacy issues and data protection breaches in the media has caused many to review their online security practices with their personal information. To provide an alternative to cloud based file backup and synchronisation, BitTorrent Inc. released an alternative cloudless file backup and synchronisation service, named BitTorrent Sync to alpha testers in April 2013. BitTorrent Sync's popularity rose dramatically throughout 2013, reaching over two million active users by the end of the year. This paper outlines a number of scenarios where the network investigation of the service may prove invaluable as part of a digital forensic investigation. An investigation methodology is proposed outlining the required steps involved in retrieving digital evidence from the network and the results from a proof of concept investigation are presented.Comment: 9th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES 2014

Data Behind the Walls An Advanced Architecture for Data Privacy Management

In today's highly connected society, we are constantly asked to provide personal information to retailers, voter surveys, medical professionals, and other data collection efforts. The collected data is stored in large data warehouses. Organisations and statistical agencies share and use this data to facilitate research in public health, economics, sociology, etc. However, this data contains sensitive information about individuals, which can result in identity theft, financial loss, stress and depression, embarrassment, abuse, etc. Therefore, one must ensure rigorous management of individuals' privacy. We propose, an advanced data privacy management architecture composed of three layers. The data management layer consists of de-identification and anonymisation, the access management layer for re-enforcing data access based on the concepts of Role-Based Access Control and the Chinese Wall Security Policy, and the roles layer for regulating different users. The proposed system architecture is validated on healthcare datasets.Comment: 7 page