Forensic Blogs

An aggregator for digital forensics blogs

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Leahy Center Thrilled to be Celebrating Ten Year Anniversary!

It’s our anniversary! It’s been 10 years since the Leahy Center for Digital Forensics & Cybersecurity first opened their doors, building off of Champlain College’s nearly decade-long initiative to educate students and support professionals in the field of digital forensics and cybersecurity. Over that time we’ve seen over 400 students come through our doors and leave as trained professionals, taking on the world. To celebrate, we’d like to take a look back at where we’ve come from, where we are now, and what the future might hold. 

Leahy Center might have started back in 2010, Champlain’s drive to train students in the up and coming field of computer forensics started way back in 2002. From this, the Computer and Digital Forensics degree path was born. This gave Champlain College students a shoe in the door to a pivotal field in an increasingly technological world.

The Beginning Champlain College Lakeside CampusChamplain College Lakeside Campus

In 2006 Champlain College sponsored a number of initiatives and partnerships among academia, the public sector, and the private sector. This was to help support law enforcement as they take on cybercrime. This initiative became the Champlain College Center for Digital Investigation, or the C3DI for short. Under the supervision of Professor Gary Kessler, Champlain College performed a similar task to the Leahy Center now, undertaking research to help all sectors, public, private, and academia, to help defend against growing cyber threats and advance the field of cybersecurity. In order to accomplish this goal, Champlain College worked hard to further develop Vermont’s capacity to combat cybercrime, a field it was previously lacking in. This extended to the Vermont public as well, with reports and research available for public research.

Champlain College, in 2009, opens its Master of Science in Digital Investigation Management, marking a shift in vision to accommodate professionals looking for more knowledge and experience in the management of digital investigation firms. Because of it’s ingenuity, the program solved a crucial problem in the industry. While programs like Champlain’s Cybersecurity undergraduate degree program fostered a burgeoning workforce in the field, the program needed more outreach to protect the public from cyber threats. This management program enabled professionals to do more than offer their services; it helped them start and manage their own firms, to which trained professionals could use to extend their reach to previously unaided areas. 

The Start of the LCDI

In June of 2010, Champlain submitted a grant to the U.S. Department of Justice. In September, the D.O.J awarded this grant to the tune of $500,000. The goal was to further bolster Vermont’s digital forensic capacity, working to increase the skill and ability of digital forensic examiners, detectives, law enforcement, and judiciary officials in regards to the acquisition and evaluation of digital forensic evidence. It was this year we saw a shift in leadership, with Jonathan Rajewski and Michal Wilkinson serving as Co-Directors.

2011 saw many changes to the C3DI. With the help of the DoJ grant and additional funding from Champlain College, over 100 students were able to apply to work for the C3DI. The opening of Champlain’s Lakeside Administrative Center gave the program dedicated office space and the utilities to further its goal.

Leahy Center for Digital Investigation dedicationLeahy Center for Digital Investigation Dedication

During this time, the C3DI was renamed the Leahy Center for Digital Investigation (LCDI), in honor of Senator Patrick Leahy. Leahy worked to secure over a million dollars in funding for the program through various grants. These grants bolstered the LCDI’s workforce and provided cybersecurity support for the local community. Some of the LCDI’s first projects were systems for the management and backup of digital forensic evidence. These were primarily for Vermont’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (or VTICAC). Also being developed were tools to help the general public. For example, we developed a tool that enabled a user to configure access to and view important information on their Kindle. 

What we’ve done so far: Virtual flipbook looking back at our 10yr history.

Over the past decade, we’ve done many more projects, including but not limited to:

-Training modules for cybersecurity software

-Benchmarks for digital forensic machines

-Creation, review, and approval of various cybersecurity tools in use by the state of Vermont

…and many more! We’ve hired great staff, such as Project Manager Joseph Williams and Senior Digital Forensics Analyst Alex Caron. We’re proud to say that, by the end of our grant, we created six unique training modules. These programs related to new digital forensic tools and the understanding of forensic reports. We were also able to use our work to secure funding for years to come.

Our Present and Future

In 2019 we saw many shifts in the makeup of the LCDI. For starters, the name changed once more to its current name: The Leahy Center for Digital Forensics and Cybersecurity. This was done to be closer in line with the focus of the program and a wider mission. Adam Goldstein was named the Executive Director of the Leahy Center, with Joseph Williams taking the helm as Managing Director and Alex Caron taking over as Professional Services Director. Students from all across the world have come to work in our program, and we couldn’t be more thankful. 

FBI Director visits Champlain CollegeFBI Director James Comey visit’s the Leahy Center

Moving forward, we’re planning on further strengthening our outreach with local partners. In the words of Director Goldstein, the Leahy Center is especially interested in “developing programs where our students are helping design and create training and other educational resources”, supporting the local community while pushing the horizon of digital forensic research. 

Bowling NightBowling Night

We’ve come a long way from where we began. We owe it to our amazing students, our spectacular faculty, and everyone who helped make this program a reality. Thank you, and we’ll see you in 2021!

Stay up to date with the Leahy Center by following us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook!

The post Leahy Center Thrilled to be Celebrating Ten Year Anniversary! appeared first on The Leahy Center for Digital Forensics & Cybersecurity.

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My Experience on The VPN Comparison Team

By Miles Campbell

We were able to learn a lot from our research into the VPNs, but I also received a lot of great experience from my first semester at the Leahy Center.

As the semester came to a close, my team finished polishing up our presentation. We decided to use Google Slides to create our presentation. This allowed us to all work on it at the same time. Additionally, all of us would have access to it, even if no one else was online.

What I Gained From my Experience

For starters, I believe this project has helped me learn how to create a professional presentation. I learned that presenting research in this setting is far different than in school. The work we’re doing at the Leahy Center is important, which adds weight when you’re trying to present it. It makes it much more stressful to try and make something great, but it pushed me into doing really good quality work.

Since this is my first semester as an intern, I was also taking a class with Mark Zammuto. This class was connected to my internship, and for it I created another presentation, along with my teammates Derek Farrell and KCMalinda Hlordsz. We presented to the other first semester interns over Google Meets. This further built upon some of the experiences I had gotten from my Leahy Center presentation. It also allowed me to compare my work directly with other intern’s works.

Overall, my first semester here at the Leahy Center was a great experience for me. I learned skills that I wouldn’t have otherwise learned in a classroom alone. My team and the rest of the Leahy Center staff have been nothing but supportive of me and my learning. I look forward to working with the rest of the team in the future, and I hope all my colleagues have a happy holiday break!

Stay up to date with the Leahy Center by following us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook!

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The Vermont Privacy Project

As the internet ties in more and more with our daily lives, internet privacy has become a big concern. The Vermont Privacy Breach project at the Leahy Center is a team of students working with a Champlain student supervisor and a Leahy Center Fellow Judy Boyd to try and tackle this growing issue. Our goal is to reduce the number of privacy incidents on residents of the State of Vermont. We plan to accomplish this by providing simple resources. Small businesses, local governments, and nonprofits can then use these to make themselves more secure. 

What We Have Accomplished?

Over the course of the semester, the team has been hard at work researching privacy breaches and other data. The plan is to use this data to create simple presentations that can be given to businesses and people alike. Our team extensively researched what a data privacy breach is, who it affects, and how to prevent them. We all put our research into a shared Google Drive folder and refined the scope of the project. We focused on teaching and presenting to others what privacy breaches were and how to prevent them. Phase One of this project encompassed common risks, the impact of breaches on individuals and organizations, and measures to prevent or mitigate risk. At this point, we are currently in the process of creating an initial presentation outlining Phase One of this project.

What is a Data Breach? A laptop with a skull and crossbones over it

A data breach is any unauthorized access into a business, state agency, or individual’s digital systems. These attacks can come in a large variety of ways, and each come with their own challenges. For example, phishing attacks will look like messages sent from a company but trick you into putting in your info so the attacker can use it themselves. Ransomware and malware are other forms of attacks. These are programs that are downloaded onto the machine that can read files, edit them, or even lock out the entire computer. Then there are attacks that try to overload your connection to the internet, called DDoS attacks, which flood your connection with junk information. 

These are all incredibly dangerous and serious issues for anybody with a computer, and as technology advances, we’re finding those computers in everyday objects. If you have any sort of wireless surveillance in your home, that could become a risk. But, by limiting who has access to your devices and watching what you download, you bring that risk down considerably. The steps to better computer safety are simple, anybody can do them, it’s just a matter of spreading that information. Therefore, we’re excited to have the opportunity to work on that goal and help those in our community and elsewhere.

What’s Next?

The next steps of our project are to finalize and practice our Phase One Presentation and prepare for our first presentation. We are really looking forward to collaborating with the Burlington Sunrise Rotary Club. It’s exciting to see the progress we have made with this project and we hope to see a glimpse of what may come next. For Phase Two of this project, we will be looking at privacy risks related to Local Government agencies, non-profits, and small businesses. For example, we’re interested in how we can bring this to more people.

Stay up to date with the Leahy Center by following us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook!

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