TY - CHAP
T1 - Cosmic rays
T2 - 15th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security, ARES 2020
AU - Overill, Richard E.
PY - 2020/8/25
Y1 - 2020/8/25
N2 - When evidence is recovered from a suspected crime scene and a criminal prosecution is mounted, the defence team may attempt to formulate an alternative non-criminal explanation for the existence of that evidence. Examples from the digital realm include the "Trojan Horse Defence" and the "Inadvertent Download Defence" against the charge of possession of child pornography, both of which have previously been analysed quantitatively. In this paper, another putative defence for the existence of forensically recovered data and/or meta-data from a seized digital device is described. The potential plausibility of this "Cosmic Ray Defence" under various memory protection conditions is estimated numerically as a function of its associated soft error rate (SER), thus enabling an evaluation to be made of its potential utility as part of a criminal defence strategy, as well as highlighting its possible significance for the conduct of digital forensic investigations. It is based on the invited keynote lecture at the 10th International Workshop on Digital Forensics (WSDF 2017), Reggio Calabria, Italy, 29 August - 1 September 2017.
AB - When evidence is recovered from a suspected crime scene and a criminal prosecution is mounted, the defence team may attempt to formulate an alternative non-criminal explanation for the existence of that evidence. Examples from the digital realm include the "Trojan Horse Defence" and the "Inadvertent Download Defence" against the charge of possession of child pornography, both of which have previously been analysed quantitatively. In this paper, another putative defence for the existence of forensically recovered data and/or meta-data from a seized digital device is described. The potential plausibility of this "Cosmic Ray Defence" under various memory protection conditions is estimated numerically as a function of its associated soft error rate (SER), thus enabling an evaluation to be made of its potential utility as part of a criminal defence strategy, as well as highlighting its possible significance for the conduct of digital forensic investigations. It is based on the invited keynote lecture at the 10th International Workshop on Digital Forensics (WSDF 2017), Reggio Calabria, Italy, 29 August - 1 September 2017.
KW - Cosmic rays
KW - Digital forensic evidence
KW - Digital memory devices
KW - Extra-terrestrial sources
KW - High-energy neutrons
KW - Scaling properties
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85090367303&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3407023.3409188
DO - 10.1145/3407023.3409188
M3 - Conference paper
AN - SCOPUS:85090367303
T3 - Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security
BT - Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security, ARES 2020
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
Y2 - 25 August 2020 through 28 August 2020
ER -