Harassing and defaming other people on the internet, usually by means of fake or anonymous user credentials is a serious and growing problem. Fortunately inernet forensics can often be used to track down the perpetrators of cyber bullying.
The problem
One of our client’s female executives received a number of vindictive and threatening e-mails. The e-mails were sent from an “anonymous” web-mail address, but there was enough information in the e-mails to show that the sender knew the victim personally and had access to a considerable amount of private information about her. We were asked to identify the sender.
The solution
Fortunately, the sender had used one of the e-mail services which embed the sender’s internet address in the hidden data (or metadata) of the e-mail. This data is not immediately visible to therecipient, but can be interpreted by someone with the necessary skills. In this case we found that a number of the malicious e-mails had been sent from our client’s own network. Analysis of proxy, firewall and other logs allowed us to trace the e-mails to a member of our client’s IT staff.
When we examined this individual’s computer, not only did we find traces of the malicious emails, we also found evidence that they had repeatedly accessed the victim’s own computer. It was from this that they had obtained the personal information they had included in the malicious e-mails.
The culprit was summarily dismissed. Both the victim and our client are considering further legal action.