Computer Crime, Investigation, and the Law

by Chuck Easttom

One can hardly open a newspaper or read news online without seeing another story about a computer-related crime. We are awash in identity theft, online child predators, and even cyber espionage. It seems overwhelming. And people in many different professions find themselves involved with computer-crime investigations. Obviously, law-enforcement officers are involved, but so are network administrators, technical-support personnel, and attorneys.

If any aspect of your work brings you into contact with computer crime, Computer Crime, Investigation, and the Law is for you. It begins with a broad introduction to the field of computer crime, discussing the history of computer crime, basic criminal techniques, and the relevant laws. Next, the book walks you through the essentials of computer forensics. Litigation is also explored, such as depositions, expert reports, trials, and even how one can select an appropriate expert witness. Lastly, the book introduces you to the specific techniques that hackers use and even shows you some of the tricks they use to infiltrate computer systems to help you defend against such attacks. This section of the book also includes a discussion of communication techniques used by computer criminals, with an overview of encryption, stenography, and hacker slang language. Computer Crime, Investigation, and the Law is your gateway into the world of investigating computer crimes.

517 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 9, 2010

About the author

Chuck Easttom is an internationally renowned computer security expert and trainer. He has been in the IT industry for over 18 years and training for over 10. He has conducted numerous computer security courses over the past decade, most notably for the Secret Service Electronic Crimes Task Force. Students in his classes often include network administrators, corporate chief security officers (CSO’s), federal agents, local law enforcement, military personal, and department of defense contractors. He also has a master’s degree in education as well as a master’s of business administration (specialized in applied computer science) and has been named to both Who’s Who in Education and Whose Who in Science and Technology. He holds over 28 industry certifications including prominent computer security certifications such as CHFI, CISSP, ISSAP, and CEH. In addition to his many certifications he is a Microsoft Certified Trainer and an EC Council certified instructor.

He was part of the teams that created the CompTIA Security+ certification test, as well as their Server+ and Linux+ certification test. He was also part of the CEH version 8 job task analysis team. Chuck also created the EC Councils CAST 615 cryptography course as well as their new Certified Encryption Specialist certification course.


He is the author of 15 computer science books including two computer security textbooks from Pearson publishing that are used at universities around the world. He is also the author of a book specifically on computer crime from Cengage publishing, and most recently a computer forensics textbook from Jones and Barlett publishing.

Chuck has been a speaker on various computer security related topics including the following: the Harvard Computer Society (topic the history of computer crime), Columba University ACM Chapter (topic the history of computer viruses), Takedown con (multiple topics all related to cryptography), and Hacker Halted (topic cryptography), and the Southern Methodist University Computer Science and Engineering research colloquium (topic organized computer crime and terrorism).

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was very well written and easy to read. It was a textbook for a computer crime class that I just finished and I learned so much from this book. The chapters about laws can be difficult to get through if you're not a lawyer, but overall it was a good textbook.

[Teri · Rating 3 out of 5]

I used this book as a text for an Introduction to Cyber Criminology class I am teaching. It is okay but not fantastic. It is a bit outdated and with all of the constant changes in technology and cyber crime, a book written last week is outdated. However, I love the layout, sections, and chapters. It is a good fundamental text for the beginner. I would like to see a teachers companion book to go along with it as well.

[Steven van Doorn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The authors have a lot of experience, but don't do the best job getting making it easily accessible. The chapters on law, included extensive (10+ pages) quotes from the actual law, which I felt did not add to the learning.