Digital Forensics
In an increasingly digital and connected world, digital forensics becomes an essential aspect of litigation. Digital forensics is the investigation and recovery of information from computers, phones, and other storage devices.
Digital Forensics Experts
Digital forensics is the process of identifying, extracting, preserving, and analyzing digital evidence in a legally defensible manner. It is primarily used in legal proceedings to uncover and interpret electronic data. Legal Eagle's digital forensics experts work within this framework to ensure the analyzed data may be admissible in court.
Identify
Determining potential sources of digital evidence such as computers, phones, and email. Then isolating the devices to ensure that digital evidence is not altered or destroyed.
Extraction
Retrieving data from digital devices or email while ensuring its integrity and authenticity. This step ensures stakeholders can access relevant information without altering or corrupting the data.
Preserve
Maintaining records of the forensic process is crucial to the integrity of digital evidence. Measures are taken, such as chain of custody logs, to ensure collected evidence remains unchanged, authentic, and admissible in court.
Analyze
Examining and interpreting extracted digital evidence to uncover useful information. This examination often focuses on deleted files, internet activity, or metadata to determine relevant artifacts linking digital evidence to individuals or incidents.
Legal Eagle
DIGITAL FORENSICS EXPERTS
Legal Eagle digital forensics experts are able to extract data in a legally defensible manner so that the data is discoverable and authenticated for presentation to South Carolina and North Carolina state and federal courts. Legal Eagle is capable of extracting data from most digital devices including:
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computers
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cellphones
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servers
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hard drives
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emails
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tablets
The information extracted may then be sent directly to the legal team or uploaded to an eDiscovery review platform. Additionally, Legal Eagle offers a third party digital forensic examiner. This forensics expert may find crucial hidden information on disc drives, mobile phones, and hosted servers, as well as on email servers, cloud servers, ram memory chips, voicemail, text messaging, and even on camera memory cards.
The evidence found utilizing digital forensics could make or break a court case, and its usefulness should never be overlooked both in criminal actions or civil actions.
Five Facts Concerning Cellphone Extractions
During complex litigation it will be important to know these 5 facts concerning cellphones and extracting data from these memory sources:
Tools and Techniques: Forensic investigators utilize specialized tools and techniques to extract and analyze cellphone data. These tools may include forensic software, hardware, and specialized cables or adapters provided by services such as Cellebrite and Harvester. Techniques can involve logical extractions (accessing files through the device's operating system) or physical extractions (directly accessing the device's memory chips).
Deleted Data and Text Messages: Even if data is deleted from a cellphone, it can often be recovered through forensic techniques. Deleted data may still reside in the device's storage until it is overwritten by new data. Recovering deleted texts can be much more challenging to accomplish. Cellphones do not store deleted text messages and most phone companies only store texts for a few hours to a few days. Cellphone backups stored in the Cloud have become a valuable resource in recovering deleted data and text messages.
Encryption and Passcodes: The increasing use of encryption and passcodes on cellphones presents challenges for digital forensics. Strong encryption methods can make it difficult or impossible to access certain data without the correct passcode or encryption key.
Cloud-Based Data: Cellphones are often connected to cloud services, such as iCloud or Google Drive, where data is synchronized and backed up. Digital forensics can involve obtaining data from these cloud services, either through legal processes or by extracting information directly from the device with the appropriate passwords.
Metadata: Cellphone data contains valuable metadata or key facts about an individual data file, such as timestamps, geolocation information, download logs, and device identifiers. This metadata can help provide a greater context of the evidence by establishing timelines, locations, and associations between different pieces of evidence