A Graphical Designer for the Development of Forensic-Ready Systems
As software systems are increasingly being exploited to perpetrate crimes, there is an emerging need for such systems to be forensic-ready, i.e. able to anticipate some of the activities that will be performed during future digital investigations.
In this project the focus will be on the preservation requirements of forensic-ready systems, which prescribe to preserve data that might constitute evidence necessary to support speculative hypotheses of potential crimes.
This project will build on existing research [1] that has developed a methodology to generate preservation specifications satisfying preservation requirements from a model of the environment where a crime can take place (also referred to as potential crime scene) and the speculative hypotheses of a crime. The generated specification consists of statements prescribing to store data (e.g., logs entries) that might constitute relevant evidence to explain how a crime is perpetrated.
In this project, the student is expected to develop a graphical designer (preferably as an Eclipse plug-in) to specify a model of the crime scene and the speculative hypotheses of a crime. The model of the crime scene will include physical entities (such as rooms of a building, people, physical devices) as well as digital devices from which data should be preserved. The speculative hypotheses of a crime will describe possible ways in which a crime can be perpetrated. The models created through the graphical designer should have a textual representation that should be compatible with the input received by the tool already developed in previous research [1] to generate a preservation specification. Finally, The student is also expected to test the usability of the graphical designer with potential users.
References
[1] D. Alrajeh, L. Pasquale, B. Nuseibeh, “Forensic-Ready Systems: Form Requirements to Specification Synthesis,” Submitted to the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering.