In 1997, Christian Wildfeuer sat down at his computer. The content of the email message he drafted and sent to his supervisor shortly after was to cause the world’s largest software manufacturer many problems. It read as follows:
Its recipient turned out to be Bill Gates. This email message was evidence in the investigation conducted against the monopolistic practices of Microsoft Corporation in 1997. The reconstructed email message was proof that the inclusion of the Internet Explorer browser in the Windows operating system was a conscious decision by the Microsoft Corporation board aimed at gaining a market advantage over a competing product from Netscape. Attaching the above message to the case files as evidence would not have been possible
if not for a field with a mysterious name – Computer Forensics.
Electronic detectives
Electronic detectives, or Computer Forensics specialists, are high-class experts who, using the latest technological achievements and advanced knowledge in data recovery, provide electronic evidence, i.e., data in electronic form secured in such a way that it is credible for the court. Looking at the percentage of documents created exclusively in electronic form (70 percent), 90 percent of which are never printed, we see that ignoring electronic evidence could result in many solvable court cases never reaching a conclusion.
A computer detective from the Vistula
We should rather say – from the Rawa, the river flowing through Katowice. It is in this city that the electronic detectives of Ontrack operate – a company that is the world’s largest provider of CF services, both globally and in this part of Europe, including Poland. The technological background for Ontrack’s Computer Forensics specialists is the Katowice-based Ontrack data recovery laboratory described in the previous issue of “e-Fakty”. Polish detectives, thanks to cooperation with other branches of the corporation, solve the toughest cases related to computer crime. As the only company in Europe, they also work cross-border – they solve
at the same time cases of electronic crimes occurring in different countries simultaneously. An example of such a case could be the case of a French concern. In April 2005, experts from the Ontrack Electronic Investigations department in Poland received an order
for so-called data acquisition, which consists of copying electronic information in such a way that it does not lose its evidentiary value (i.e., while maintaining the so-called checksum, whose unchanged value guarantees no interference with the content of the secured electronic files). An identical operation was carried out at the same time by Ontrack specialists in Germany and France. The client was the board of a French pharmaceutical company.
The article comes from the magazine “e-Fakty” 4/2006.