Forensic Investigation of Cooperative Storage Cloud Service: Symform as a Case Study

Yee-Yang Teing; Ali Dehghantanha; Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo; Tooska Dargahi; Mauro Conti

doi:10.1111/1556-4029.13271

Forensic Investigation of Cooperative Storage Cloud Service: Symform as a Case Study

J Forensic Sci. 2017 May;62(3):641-654. doi: 10.1111/1556-4029.13271. Epub 2016 Nov 25.

Authors

Yee-Yang Teing¹, Ali Dehghantanha¹, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo^{2

3}, Tooska Dargahi⁴, Mauro Conti⁵

Affiliations

¹ School of Computing, Science and Engineering, University of Salford, Manchester, U.K.
² Department of Information Systems and Cyber Security, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 78249-0631, USA.
³ Information Assurance Research Group, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, SA 5095, Australia.
⁴ Department of Computer Engineering, West Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.
⁵ Department of Mathematics, University of Padua, Padua, Italy.

PMID: 27885663
DOI: 10.1111/1556-4029.13271

Abstract

Researchers envisioned Storage as a Service (StaaS) as an effective solution to the distributed management of digital data. Cooperative storage cloud forensic is relatively new and is an under-explored area of research. Using Symform as a case study, we seek to determine the data remnants from the use of cooperative cloud storage services. In particular, we consider both mobile devices and personal computers running various popular operating systems, namely Windows 8.1, Mac OS X Mavericks 10.9.5, Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS, iOS 7.1.2, and Android KitKat 4.4.4. Potential artefacts recovered during the research include data relating to the installation and uninstallation of the cloud applications, log-in to and log-out from Symform account using the client application, file synchronization as well as their time stamp information. This research contributes to an in-depth understanding of the types of terrestrial artifacts that are likely to remain after the use of cooperative storage cloud on client devices.

Keywords: Symform analysis; cloud forensics; cooperative cloud; digital forensics; forensic science; mobile app forensics; mobile device forensics; peer-to-peer forensics.