Digital Forensic Analysis of E-Mails: A Trusted E-Mail Protocol

E-mail has revolutionized business, academic, and personal communication The advantages of e-mail include speedy delivery, ease of communication, cost effectiveness, geographical independence, and the portability of mailboxes. The last two are the biggest advantages over snail mail. However, with e-mail comes the threat of a genuine user being compromised through key loggers, social engineering, shoulder surfing, password guessing and other similar, though less technical, methods. This passive espionage can have a direct impact on the genuine user in terms of denial of information, loss of money, loss of time, mental harassment and an attack of personal privacy. To enable digital forensic analysis of e-mails, we propose behavioral biometric based authentication, which is analogous to a signature in paper documents. In the proposed system, if someone other than a genuine user tries to authenticate himself, then detection and fixing is possible. Introduction Most countries recognize e-mail as legitimate document evidence. E-mails have been used as substantial sources of evidence in cases of homicide, cyber stalking, harassment, spoofed identity and espionage. The digital forensic aspect of e-mails (email forensics) requires urgent attention, due to its impact in solving most of the cases of Computer Frauds and Cyber Crimes (CFCC). To make things worse, investigative and law enforcement agencies are under-prepared to tackle the explosion of this new unseen, unheard, and innovative way of committing crime. Technologies such as quantum computing, DNA computing, and “Adaptive or Reconfigurable Computing,” [1], [16] make hardware behave flexibly and can be tailored to imitate various stipulations. The latest Wi-Fi technology and migration of wireless standards 802.11b to five times faster 802.11g [1], [16] has forced rethinking about security and authentication systems.