Open Source Based Online Forensic Tool for Analysis of Malicious Activity over Email Traffic

Email Forensics

Email is ubiquitous in the contemporary commercial environment, providing a convenient and efficient method for communication. Email brings great convenience to people, but it also had a negative impact. However, involving email-related disputes and crime problems have become increasingly prominent. With the continuous development of network technology, Email has become an important means of information transmission and management in government agencies, enterprises and individuals, however, the subsequent problems of protecting web mail security has become a concern to users. Many cases of inability to determine the authenticity result in a lack of effectiveness of the evidence. In order to determine the authenticity of email evidence, a scientific appraisal is very important. Whenever you send an email message your computer generates additional information relevant to email. This additional information forms a trail of digital artifacts that can be followed when analyzing email messages. Email Forensics is concerned with the extraction of this additional data and using it to recover other information regarding emails. In addition, email has become a potential carrier of criminal evidence. Using email to spam, spread pornography, fraud and other criminal activities have become increasingly rampant. Therefore, technical appraisal of email plays an increasingly important role for analyzing and providing evidence. At present, there exists sizable amount of support for Open Source based methods for acquiring, identifying and analyzing web-based email, despite its widespread use. There is the need to achieve a systematic process for email forensics which integrates into the normal forensic analysis workflow, and which accommodates the distinct characteristics of email evidence.

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