Forensic data recovery and examination of magnetic swipe card cloning devices

Magnetic swipe card technology is used for many purposes including credit, debit, store loyalty, mobile phone top-up and security identification cards. These types of cards and the details contained on them are often relied upon as a form of identification and personal authentication. As such reliance is placed upon them it is surprising that they do not incorporate more stringent security features, and because of this lack of features it is not surprising that they attract the attention of people who wish to exploit them for illegal gain. The paper introduces the type of technology, and range of devices available for manipulating magnetic swipe card data. It proposes the use of Digital Evidence Bags as a suitable format for the evidential storage of information obtained from them, thus further illustrating the flexibility of the format and demonstrating the diverse range of devices that have to be handled within the digital investigation and law enforcement community.