Digital Life Analysis: Undergrad Single

Transcription

1 Nathan Goulding November 21, 2006 CS 489 Digital Forensics Digital Life Analysis: Undergrad Single Executive Summary This paper analyzes the impact that people make in today's digital world. The use of the Internet and various websites is examined, including personal, social networking, music search, and general question-and-answer websites. The popular Google search engine is used to demonstrate the types of information available about the author, including various news articles, messages, and a short biography. Finally, a brief look at a person's impact in the "offline" digital world is also included, in addition to a list of possible areas of further research. Introduction Digital technology is everywhere. We use computers and other electronic devices daily for conducting business, for communication, for leisure, and for many other activities. Almost every time we send an , purchase something with a credit card, or browse the World Wide Web, we leave a trace. In this paper I will examine the imprint we leave in the digital world, and in particular I will focus on the impact we make through use of the Internet. The Internet and the World Wide Web The World Wide Web is composed of billions of websites for innumerable purposes. Examples include websites for distributing news, making financial transactions, playing games, sending , finding information, and connecting with other people. One of the biggest contributions to a person's "digital footprint" is his or her own personal website. With cheap and abundant web hosting readily available, more and more people are building their own web pages to share information with friends, family, and colleagues. Personal websites can include anything from family pictures to research

2 Goulding 2 publications. However, people should exercise caution with the information they publish. Contact information such as a telephone number, postal address, and address is easily captured by computer programs that scour the Web for such data, and this information can be used for malicious purposes. Another significant contribution to a person's digital imprint is participation in social networking websites. Social networking has become very popular in recent years, especially among high school and college students, but among other members of society as well. Some companies, such as Facebook [1], limit the scope of information that users can see; Facebook divides its website into different networks based on schools, businesses, or geographical areas. Other companies, like MySpace [2], allow much greater access to users' information. Many users of these social networking websites do not read each company's privacy policy, and unfortunately the policies often describe some less-than-scrupulous business practices. For example, Facebook previously included this statement in its privacy policy: "We may share your information with third parties, including responsible companies with which we have a relationship." The company has since removed this clause from the policy, but until it did, users had no right to privacy from third-party companies. There are many other types of websites in which people leave digital footprints. For example, Pandora is a popular website dedicated to music search [3]. The Pandora service allows users to create custom radio stations based on music they like, and they can then listen to these stations anywhere a broadband Internet connection is available. What most users don't realize is that the default setting is to publish your music stations and customizations for everyone else to see. Your embarrassing fondness for The Monkees becomes public if someone can associate your real name with your Pandora account, unless you search through a number of menus in the Pandora interface and find the option to disable your online profile. Ask MetaFilter [4] is a branch of the MetaFilter [5] website in which users can post questions about anything they wish, and answers to other users' questions that they feel

3 Goulding 3 comfortable providing information about. Questions range from asking for suggestions of things to do in specific towns, to requesting help with troubleshooting a faulty computer monitor, to providing a vague description of a story and asking where it came from. Users of MetaFilter, or "MeFites" as they are known, must be logged-in to post questions and answers, and this means that every user account forms a profile of that user. Much information can be gained about a user by looking at the questions he has asked and the replies to other questions he has posted. For example, if a user frequently asks questions about art galleries in Los Angeles, she is likely an art connoisseur in the Los Angeles area. Internet Search One very simple method for a digital forensics investigator to locate more information about a suspect is to search for the suspect's real name using an online search engine such as Google [6]. In addition to the suspect's real name, an investigator should also search for known online aliases that the suspect uses. Aliases and user names are commonly used in online discussion forums and other similar websites instead of real names. An important consideration to keep in mind when using an online search engine is that most engines cache content as they crawl the Web, and this means that since-updated information is frequently still available. This fact is useful if an investigator is looking for information that has recently been erased or modified. To determine part of my own digital footprint, I used Google to search for websites containing my name. A search for "Nathan Goulding" yielded several interesting results. For example, there are currently two other people named Nathan Goulding in addition to myself that return a significant number of web pages. Some of the results specific to me include news articles from New Mexico Tech's website and various newspapers, minutes from IEEE board meetings, messages I have ed to the Lyris lists for IEEE and Tau Beta Pi on campus, and a number of other miscellaneous web pages. Additionally, I found short biographies of myself on

4 Goulding 4 the websites of a few of my former employers. In my search I came across a web log (or "blog") belonging to a different Nathan Goulding [7]. This Nathan is a student at New York University who coincidentally is only a few months older than me and also shares my interest in technology. As I was browsing his website, I came across an entry titled "Not Me" [8], and I saw my own picture on the front page! The picture is a black-and-white reproduction printed in the Mountain Mail newspaper, and presumably Nathan stumbled across the online version [9]. I am now friends with Nathan after contacting him with Facebook. Information Security Despite growing concerns about privacy, a number of websites are not very secure in handling their users' information. I applied for a few different graduate fellowships this semester, and all of the applications were online. Most allow the applicant to set up a user name and password, but the National Physical Science Consortium uses a different, and shocking, approach. After the user registers, he is given a unique "access code" to return to his application after logging off. The shocking fact is that this access code is all that is needed to view and modify the application there is no password required. Although the access codes appear to be random numbers, the system is insecure against a brute-force attack, because there are thousands of valid codes. An attacker could compromise a large amount of data about fellowship applicants, including contact information, Social Security numbers, and financial status information. I have been surprised in a number of other instances when careless mistakes have led to a leak of information. For example, the professors of a number of my classes in this and previous semesters have frequently posted grade information to their class websites. Normally grades are posted in such a manner as to not identify each person; for example, one professor posts grades next to the last four digits of each student's ID number. However, there have been a few times

5 Goulding 5 when the names of students have accidentally been published right alongside the grades. Although the professors have always fixed the situation quickly after being alerted, the information is still public until someone notices, and there is always the possibility that it has been cached during a search engine's regular crawl. Also, there is nothing to stop a malicious intruder from saving the information to his hard drive. The Offline World I have discussed some concerns about our digital impact in the online world, but there are also considerations "offline" as well. With the widespread use of computers and other electronic devices, people leave offline digital imprints everywhere. The most notable example is a person's own computer hard disk drive. A hard drive is a central repository for much of an individual's life; it contains a cornucopia of personal information, including personal documents, financial information, music and video files, and instant message logs, and software that the owner has installed. In addition to computer hard drives, people also leave an audit trail whenever they conduct a credit card transaction. Some of the credit card companies openly monitor this information for the purpose of fraud prevention. For example, some companies will contact the customer if his or her card is used in two geographically distant locations within a short timespan. In this case the audit trail is beneficial, but we can never be sure what other information is being used by the credit card companies, and for what purposes they are using it. Future Work I have only touched on a few topics in this paper, and there are many other examples of locations in which we leave a digital trail: communication Discussion forums Community forums, such as Craigslist [10] Online auction transactions

6 Goulding 6 Online banking and investment websites Online data storage websites Online video-hosting websites, such as YouTube [11] Conclusions Although brief, this paper has discussed some of the aspects that shape our digital footprints, in both the online and offline worlds. With the explosion in use of the World Wide Web, people must be careful about their personal information and how it is handled. With the right tools, digital forensics investigators and anyone else with similar access can discover a significant amount of information about a suspect or target.

7 Goulding 7 Referenced Websites [1] Facebook, Inc. < [2] MySpace, Inc. < [3] Pandora Media, Inc. < [4] Ask MetaFilter < [5] MetaFilter Network, LLC < [6] Google, Inc. < [7] NathanGoulding.com < [8] "Not Me". NathanGoulding.com < not_me&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1> [9] "Honor Society Gives Scholarship To Tech Student". Mountain Mail Newspaper < php> [10] Craigslist, Inc. < [11] YouTube, Inc. <