A platform to assist law enforcement agencies in internet forensics

Tag: malware, payments tracking, Internet Forensics
Researcher: Stefano Zanero
Department: DEIB

Crimes are as adaptive as any social behavior, and with technological progress, new threats and issues emerge as well. Offences such as theft and scams are very effective on the internet, and with a relatively low investment perpetrators can steal a great deal of personal information.

RAMSES, a Horizon 2020 project, has had the objective to help Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) with digital forensics investigations. Two real-life case studies have been taken into consideration: ransomware and banking Trojans. Researchers used big data technologies to extract, storage, link and interpret information extracted from the internet and to look for patterns of fraudulent behavior.

The project ended in August 2019 and has reached its three main goals: researchers have built guidelines and models shared and made available to LEAs by examining the current landscape of fraudulent activities on the surface and on the deep web as well as have completed a comprehensive examination of best practices around Europe in tackling cyber crime.

Through the use of big data, they were able to search for patterns of fraudulent behaviors and hidden information and were able to build models to track malware payments.

Lastly they have diffused the knowledge and best practices collected in the project at a European level involving all stakeholders and LEAs, by including the experience gathered through the pilot programs that have taken place in the project in three different EU countries (Portugal, Belgium and Spain).

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash