Tese de Doutoramento apresentada ao Departamento de Ciência da Informação da University of Otago, Nova Zelândia. Ficheiro de 8,32 MB em formato PDF (407 p.).

1 Introduction. 2 Background. 2.1 Digital Forensics. 2.2 Digital Evidence. 2.3 Digital Forensic Research Challenges. 2.4 Application Software. 2.5 Anti-forensics. 2.6 Conclusion. Literature Review 43. 3.1 Forensic Analysis of Anti-forensic Tools. 3.2 Reverse Engineering of Application Software. 3.3 Automated Digital Forensic Analysis. 3.4 Conclusion. Research Methodology 73. 4.1 Digital Forensic Research Methodologies. 4.2 Design Science Research Methodology. 4.3 Experimental Testing Method. 4.4 Ethical Approval. 4.5 Conclusion. 5 System Design. 5.1 System Design Overview. 5.2 Digital Artifact Identification. 5.3 Application Profile Data Abstraction. 5.4 Target Data Set Processing. 5.5 Digital Artifact Matching. 5.6 Conclusion. 6 System Demonstration. 6.1 Tool Operation. 6.2 Experimental Testing. 6.3 System Demonstration: Creating Application Profiles. 6.4 Filtering Irrelevant Artifacts from Application Profiles. 6.5 System Demonstration: Recreated Application Profiles. 6.6 System Demonstration: Digital Artifact Matching. 6.7 Overview of Achieved Research Objectives. 6.8 Conclusion. 7 System Evaluation. 7.1 Public Data Set Overview: M57-Patents Scenario. 7.2 M57-Patents Scenario: Effectiveness Testing and Results. 7.3 M57-Patents Scenario: Efficiency Testing and Findings. 7.4 M57-Patents Scenario: Discussion and Observations. 7.5 Real-World Data Set Overview: Second Hand Hard Drives. 7.6 Real-World Data Set Findings. 7.7 Overview of Achieved Research Objectives. 7.8 Conclusion. 8 Conclusion. 9 References. A Appendix: Research Methodology. B Appendix: System Design. C Appendix: System Demonstration. D Appendix: System Evaluation.