December 2011

The month started at a very nice organized cybercrime conference in London http://defence.flemingeurope.com/cyber-security-summit/ also forensic aspects, and in depth on Scada and mobile systems.

In December I just had a week vacation in Gibraltar/Spain, since most often we go in vacation in winter and not in summer due to the climate in the Netherlands. It is very amazing to see that the airport runway is crossing the regular road.

Also I had to do internal examination and defend six reports with an external expert, and passed that. As each exam it always takes preparation time, however it good to have discussion about reports that have been written.

In the last week of this year I finally have some time to clean my desk, and preparing presentations which I have not covered already, as well as time time to finalize reports and reviews.

Conference in Chongqing

Bit Forensic conference in Chongqing

It was the second conference on forensic science, many good speakers from Europe, Australia, Asia and the North America, and very good to see that the government of Chongqing is investing very much in Forensic Science in collaboration with Universities in the United States.

November 2011

On forensic science many resources are available on the internet, one resource that I saw lately, is a good overview for people that are interested in a carreer in forensic science, http://www.bestforensicscienceschools.com/blog/ or http://www.forensicsciencetechnician.net/blog/ . The specialized universities that have course in forensic science, are numerous. One issue is however that there are many more students in forensic science, compared to the number of jobs available in the field. So often I have students that work on a project for a while, and then later on, of course they will do some other work, related to forensic science, or perhaps something completely different.

This is different for students that specialize in forensic ICT, and currently it is difficult to attract people to these jobs since not many students appear to chose ICT. Also the number of people that are requested in cybersecurity related areas are very many. We see that law enforcement in many countries is expanding in many countries, since we become aware that since many processes are linked to internet, with software and hardware that are mostly not very transparant in how they exactly work. Also we see that systems are updated regularly, due to the complexity of the software and hardware solutions, this remains also a challenge even if the source code is available. Reverse engineering is often work that takes a lot of patience and time, and with the development cycles of products become shorter, it means also that with new versions of software and hardware, only a part can be used again.

Malware developers are also changing there software often, and it is unknown how many systems have been infected, however the number of reports of botnets are huge and develop malware. So either way, there is a lot in forensic ICT to develop, investigate and finally learn from these in making systems more secure.

October 2011

The month is with relatively many conferences, so one week I am in Montreal, Canada at the Colloquium IT Security Cyber Forensics and Combatting Cybercrime. Much nice forensic research on different aspects on cybercrime analysis and attacks. Also excellent for networking. I also gave an invited talk there, and it is an excellent venue, and also good to practice French language, although there was parrallel translation. The advantage of conferences is also that I have time to review proposals, write some text and look to planning. Also interesting to see that the costs of cybercrime is difficult to estimate, since much is not seen by governments.

Two weeks for casework, and looking for results from experiments of students on different topics as camera identification, enf and iris scanners. Also nice opportunities for European projects in the field.

Then one week at the lab, and the next week to ChongQing, China for the 2nd BIT Forensic Conference. Last year it was very nice, and I am looking forward to be there.

September (2) 2011

Sometimes things do not work as planned due to circumstances. I should leave to Riga as chairman for the ENFSI Forensic IT Working group meeting, however was in bad luck, due to an accute appidendicitis, and I had surgery for that. So unfortunately no visit to Riga for me this time, with the nice ENFSI group. However since the conference is very well organized and the steering committee is there, I am sure it will be a nice event.

However I hope the plans next week will work better, and as long as the complications are not too severe, it should work. Also the IAFS conference is this week, so I know many people that go to Madeira.

However many things work well, some projects got approved, and of course some interesting casework.

September 2011

As usual it is busy in September after the vacation. I had a phone conference call with the Board of Directors of the AAFS www.aafs.org at 2 am in the morning. I am getting used to it, however it takes always some time to get back to sleep afterwards, it is good to see the next call is earlier.

The ENFSI Forensic IT Working group meeting in Riga is approaching, as well as other meetings which I have to prepare. Currently also new students come in for projects on biometric devices and PRNU as well as heart beat. In October I have a meeting in Montreal were I am invited speaker and a meeting in China. Later on I have a week vacation, so lots of travelling in the meantime.

Also I was asked for a forensic cruise, and I was wondering what happens there. People seem to enjoy forensic topics on cruises, so who knows perhaps I might join such a cruise as invited speaker in future.

August 2011

August is always the time for writing articles and papers, and working on backlogs and doing new proposals for projects etc. Just finished submitting abstracts to the AAFS conference in Atlanta in 2012 . Also preparing our ENFSI FIT Working group meeting Forensic IT in Riga .

I am working on a paper for an encyclopedia on identity fraud, and of course the forensic invesigation of this topic. In the past we worked on issues around identity issues with biometric systems and spoofing etc within FIDIS.

Currently also the financial situation in Europe is getting more troublesome, so I expect more government cuts in future. It is always good to be prepared for this, and hopefully forensic science will not be hurt too much. Unfortunately we saw already in the United Kingdom that the government shut down the Forensic Science Service, the largest forensic science lab in Europe at the beginning of this year.

Also interested to see how the CSI effect will evolve, sometimes I get called to court with questions concerning image processing in CSI and why we can not do the same. Perhaps the expectations will go to the regular level again, since nowadays there are many students in forensic science, however it is not easy to get a job, since in general there are not that many vacancies. This is different for forensic ICT where we see that it is more difficult to have vacancies fulfilled in informatics and related areas, since it is expected that casework in cybercrime and related areas will grow.