Xbox Crime Fighting

Reported February 2010

ATLANTA (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Computer crime has been a growing problem since it first showed up on the scene in the 1980s. While criminals keep coming up with new ways to break the rules, now law enforcement is better at cracking these crimes thanks to a new way to reveal evidence hidden by criminals.

For forensic investigator Bill Odom, a hard drive can be a complicated crime scene.

"You can't just take a hard drive put it to your head or rub your hand or a divining rod and get the information out," Odom told Ivanhoe. "You have to go through a series of steps using forensically sound methods to see what information is on there."

It's not just computers. Criminals are now using game consoles like Xbox to stash their evidence.

"Certainly pornographic pictures, or something of that nature, but they could also go to the extreme of things that were intellectual property," Odom said. "It could be software. It could be documents. It could be data bases."

"You can put anything on an Xbox that you can put on a PC," David Collins, a computer scientist at Protowise Labs, explained.

Collins says these consoles use specialized file systems, difficult for police to search and analyze. A corrupted video game can give criminals a way in.

"The result is the hack," Collins said.

Now, Collins has developed a new toolkit that unlocks these consoles, so investigators can view, analyze and save anything stored inside.

"My tool enables an investigator to forensically examine an image of an Xbox hard drive," Collins said.

Opening the door to photos, software, and any evidence a criminal might be trying to hide.

"The better I'm able to detect it, the better I'm able to point my finger and say this is how we know this person did this," Collins said.

It's a new way to beat cyber criminals at their own game.

The new toolkit, called XFT Game Console Forensics, is expected to be released within the next couple months. Collins, its inventor, also teaches computer science and digital forensics at Sam Houston University. He says he's getting inquiries daily from law enforcement agencies all over the world who are anxious to put the new cyber crime fighting tool to work.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.-USA, contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

David Collins
Protowise Labs
Address
(936) 294 3522
dcc002@shsu.edu

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
IEEE
Pender McCarter
IEEE http://www.ieee.org
IEEE-USA http://www.ieeeusa.org
p.mccarter@ieee.org

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