An Android Communication App Forensic Taxonomy

Due to the popularity of Android devices and applications (apps), Android forensics is one of the most studied topics within mobile forensics. Communication apps, such as instant messaging and Voice over IP (VoIP), are one popular app category used by mobile device users, including criminals. Therefore, a taxonomy outlining artifacts of forensic interest involving the use of Android communication apps will facilitate the timely collection and analysis of evidentiary materials from such apps. In this paper, 30 popular Android communication apps were examined, where a logical extraction of the Android phone images was collected using XRY, a widely used mobile forensic tool. Various information of forensic interest, such as contact lists and chronology of messages, was recovered. Based on the findings, a two‐dimensional taxonomy of the forensic artifacts of the communication apps is proposed, with the app categories in one dimension and the classes of artifacts in the other dimension. Finally, the artifacts identified in the study of the 30 communication apps are summarized using the taxonomy. It is expected that the proposed taxonomy and the forensic findings in this paper will assist forensic investigations involving Android communication apps.     

Drug abuse's smallest victims: in utero drug exposure

The social and economic impact of drug use on our global population continues to increase leaving no geographical, social or cultural group untouched. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), in one of the few large surveys of maternal abuse, found that 5.5% of mothers reported taking an illicit substance during gestation. These figures certainly are underestimates due to the stigma of drug use during pregnancy and the accompanying legal, ethical and economic issues. Although drugs of choice and routes of administration vary by country, exposure of our most valuable resource, our children, to the developmental effects of drugs is an enormous problem. In utero drug exposure can have a severe impact not only on the development of the fetus, but also on the child during later stages of life. More than 75% of infants exposed to drugs have major medical problems as compared to 27% of unexposed infants. The cost of treating drug-affected infants was twice the cost of non-affected infants. Obstetrical complications including placental insufficiency, miscarriage, intrauterine death, and increased incidence of infectious and sexually-transmitted diseases are higher in the drug-abusing mother. Treatment for pregnant addicts should be a high priority for our governments. Increased awareness and improvement in our understanding of drug abuse in the medical, legal and social realms will enable us to reduce the barriers to treatment for this important population.Accurate identification of in utero drug exposure has important implications for the care of the mother and child, but can raise difficult legal issues. Society discourages prenatal care with the infliction of harsh criminal penalties. Maternal drug use during pregnancy can be monitored with urine, sweat, oral fluid and/or hair testing. Detection of in utero drug exposure has traditionally been accomplished through urine testing; however, the window of detection is short, reflecting drug use for only a few days before delivery. Monitoring exposure through testing of alternative matrices, such as neonatal meconium and hair, offers advantages including non-invasive collection and detection earlier in gestation. There are many unresolved issues in monitoring in utero drug exposure that urgently require research. These can be divided into research to definitively differentiate drug exposed and non-drug-exposed fetuses, determine the most efficient methods to routinely monitor women's drug use, and determine how these drug test results relate to neonatal and maternal outcomes. Research in this area is difficult and expensive to perform, but necessary to assess accurately drug effects on the fetus. By increasing our understanding of the physiological, biochemical and behavioral effects of gestational drug exposure, we may ultimately provide solutions for better drug prevention, treatment and a reduction in the number of drug-exposed children.     

Remote Wiping and Secure Deletion on Mobile Devices: A Review

Mobile devices have become ubiquitous in almost every sector of both private and commercial endeavors. As a result of such widespread use in everyday life, many users knowingly and unknowingly save significant amounts of personal and/or commercial data on these mobile devices. Thus, loss of mobile devices through accident or theft can expose users—and their businesses—to significant personal and corporate cost. To mitigate this data leakage issue, remote wiping features have been introduced to modern mobile devices. Given the destructive nature of such a feature, however, it may be subject to criminal exploitation (e.g., a criminal exploiting one or more vulnerabilities to issue a remote wiping command to the victim's device). To obtain a better understanding of remote wiping, we survey the literature, focusing on existing approaches to secure flash storage deletion and provide a critical analysis and comparison of a variety of published research in this area. In support of our analysis, we further provide prototype experimental results for three Android devices, thus providing both a theoretical and applied focus to this article as well as providing directions for further research.     

Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Risks of Prepaid Cards Instruments?

Advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) have had, and will continue to have, wide-ranging influences on how the banking and finance industry operates. Making payments and transmitting money electronically or online are increasingly popular. An increased dependence on global electronic payment systems and the ability to move large amounts of money expeditiously across different jurisdiction, however, expose both payment processing companies and consumers to an evolving spectrum of threats such as fraud and money laundering. This article considers ways in which prepaid cards can be exploited by organised criminals and terrorists to launder their illicit proceeds of crime, and to transfer money anonymously and instantaneously over the globe for use by terrorist organisations. Risks identified in this article include recruiting card mules (e.g. international students) to purchase prepaid cards, and the mailing or shipping of prepaid cards out of the country without regulators being aware. To minimise risks of abuse by organised criminals and terrorists, legislation will need to adapt to deal with threats that organised criminals and terrorists seek to exploit. Future directions for research in relation to prepaid cards are also identified.

Criminal Exploitation of Online Systems by Organised Crime Groups

This article considers how information and communications technologies (ICT) can be used by organised crime groups to infringe legal and regulatory controls. Three categories of groups are identified: traditional organised criminal groups which make use of ICT to enhance their terrestrial criminal activities; organised cybercriminal groups which operate exclusively online; and organised groups of ideologically and politically motivated individuals who make use of ICT to facilitate their criminal conduct. The activities of each group are then assessed in relation to five areas of risk: the use of online payment systems, online auctions, online gaming, social networking sites and blogs. It is concluded that the distinction between traditional organised crime groups and the other two groups—cybercriminal groups and ideologically/politically motivated cyber groups—is converging, with financially-motivated attacks becoming more targeted. Legislation will need to adapt to deal with new technological developments and threats that organised criminals seek to exploit.

Is institutionalization of the six-party talks possible?

During 2003 and 2004, after having successfully hosted two six-party talks and a round of working-group level meetings on the North Korean nuclear crisis, China pushed to institutionalize the talks. Such an initiative coming from China was a shock to the world, since it has long maintained a passive, negative and defensive posture against multilateral cooperative security arrangements. This article declares that China's idea to utilize the six-party talks as a steppingstone toward a multilateral cooperative security arrangement is premature. It argues that the first priority is to address the failure of the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea—what was, then, believed to be the solution for the North Korean nuclear crisis. This article dissects the failure and identifies one critical factor for the viability of any future peaceful resolution—the economic sanctions that the US has placed against North Korea for the past half-century. The authors argues that if the issue of sanctions is not addressed, the current six-party talks will not be successful.     

Has Basismo Disappeared?1

Abstract – In Brazil basismo has evolved from a libertarian discourse encouraged by the Church to a more institutionalised activity centred on local and international NGOs, with their increasingly managerial priorities.