Chapter 7

Forensic Collection of Cloud Storage Data

Does the Act of Collection Result in Changes to the Data or its Metadata?

The timely acquisition and preservation of data from cloud storage can be an issue for law enforcement agencies and other digital forensic practitioners. In a jurisdiction which has legal provisions to collect data available to a computer or device, the process may involve accessing an account to collect the data. Using three popular public cloud storage providers (Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft SkyDrive) as case studies, this chapter explores the process of collecting data from a cloud storage account using a browser and also downloading files using client software. We then compare these with the original files ...

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