Digital Forensics in the Cloud Computing Era

Cloud Computing (CC) is a promising next-generation computing paradigm providing network and computing resources on demand via the web. The cloud market is still in its infancy and all major issues, ranging from interoperability and standardization, to legislation and SLA contracts are still wide open. However, the main obstacle for a more catholic acceptance of the cloud model is security. In the CC model, the client has limited control over his data and computations as he outsources everything to the cloud provider. This basic CC feature influences several security related areas. In this paper, we investigate the impact that the CC model has on the digital forensics methodologies. Digital Forensics (DF) is the branch of computer science that develops evidence pertained in the digital world for use in civil or criminal court proceedings and this shared ownership of digital resources that the CC model inherits influences severely their analysis.