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Social Network Forensic. By Xing Liu CSC153 Spring 2009. Background of Social Network. Bring people with special interests together. Classmates.com(1995) sixDegrees.com(1997) on indirect ties. Myspace(2003) Facebook(2003) Flickr(2004) - Photos Ning(2005) - Own Social Network
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Social Network Forensic By Xing Liu CSC153 Spring 2009
Background of Social Network • Bring people with special interests together. • Classmates.com(1995) • sixDegrees.com(1997) on indirect ties. • Myspace(2003) • Facebook(2003) • Flickr(2004) - Photos • Ning(2005) - Own Social Network • twitter(2006)-text-based posts
Background of Social Network con't • Huge amount of people related in social network. • 75% of software developers belong to at least one social network. • Social networking among US broadband users has grown 93% since 2006. • Twitter - From Feb '08 to Feb '09, it clocked in at a whopping 1,382% growth rate. Source: http://www.socialnetworkingwatch.com/all_social_networking_statistics/
Technical Details of Social Networks • Mostly web-based systems. • Web servers and databases in the backend. • Have its own API services and application languages. • Facebook – FBML(Facebook Markup Language). • MySpace Developer Platform – based on the OpenSocial model from Google Code.
Issues with Social Networking • Privacy – easy accesses to personal information such as birthday or personal images. • Potential misuse – fake identities. • Child safety – online sexual predators.
Social Networking Cases • October 2005, pictures from Facebook were used to cite violators at North Carolina State University for under age drinking. • In November 2005, student used the message board of a Facebook group to share class information without authorization of professor at Kansas State University. • February 2007, following the fatal hit-and-run death of freshman in University of Connecticut, police was able to link to the suspect driver by identifying suspect's girlfriend with the help of Facebook. • Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_social_network_websites_in_investigations
Forensic Methods for Social Networking Cases • Client Side – seize victims' or suspects' computers. • Server Side – contact social network service providers to grab information from their servers. • Real Time – intercept the message sent in real time.
Forensic Methods – Client Side • Use forensic tools such as FTK to look for any deleted browser history or messages in the hard drive. • Check the registry for device connection information. • If a case is involved in photo evidence, we can do a FTK keyword search for related photo information. • Steganography Tools for hidden message within photos.
Forensic Methods – Server Side • Contact service providers to give out server information. • Log files in the web servers, such as Access Log in Apache web server – get IP address of clients. • FTP log for uploaded images' information. • Live system imaging using dd & Netcat. (Discussed in Chapter 6)
Forensic Methods – Real Time • Contact ISP provider to monitor information sent between the client and server machines. • Monitor suspect's router for live traffic data stream. • Install Keylogger in the suspect's machine.
Social Networking Forensic – obstacles • The the impact of social network is getting bigger and bigger. • From acquiring evidence standpoint, it's getting harder to acquire because of more servers involved. • Computer forensic experts need to be more familiar to different web and database server settings. • Learn different web services application languages such as FBML and OpenSocial.
Social Networking Forensic – advantages • Information in social network can be easily searched by investigators. • Photos posted in the social network profiles may be used as evidence. • Because of the social network links of degrees, investigators can learn important information by identifying related personnels in the network.