Computer & Digital Forensics Minor

Students in this course will be presented concepts from white collar and cyber crime arena. The topics may include identify theft, fraud, cyber terrorism, hacking, cyber bullying, child pornography and sexual exploitation, testimony, civil and criminal litigation. Students will learn best practices with hands-on experience in identifying and preserving digital evidence.

This course will examine digital forensics as it relates to both civil and criminal investigations. The course content includes best practices in examining and reporting on digital evidence. Students will be exposed to current technologies and methods as well as leading edge techniques with practical based projects. Students will utilize various popular commercial and free/open-source tools to test and cross-validate results.

This course explores more advanced topics and methodologies for examining digital evidence. Topics taught in this class include File System Forensics, Computer Operating System Forensics and Mobile Device Forensics. Students are challenged to work individually and in groups to examine and prepare detailed reports showing the relevance of digital evidence to mock cases. This course presents a higher level of technical detail and will balance theory and hands-on aspects for conducting digital forensic examinations.

Students will learn various techniques to study malware working with real commodity malware as well as specially crafted advanced malware. We study various techniques of malware propagation, methods of detection-evasion and how to respond to a malware outbreak. Students will learn how to acquire system memory and forensically analyze memory dumps. Finally, students will learn about best practices and techniques for responding to security incidents.