IEEE Internet Policy Newsletter - March 2018

ISSUE 9 | MARCH 2018

Digital Forensics and Enforcement of the Law

By Alison Lytle, Noah Stephens, James Conner, Sajad Bashiri, and Steve Jones, PhD
Ball State University; Center for Information and Communication Sciences

Digital forensics is a critical aspect of modern law enforcement investigations, and deals with how data is gathered, studied, analyzed, and stored. This includes the recovery and investigation of data found in electronic devices. Due to the nature of flash memory, and a lack of sufficient protocols in place to outline effective data-retrieval techniques for solid state discs (SSDs) and universal serial bus (USB) flash drives, data forensic examiners face many challenges that sometimes impede their ability to operate successfully. In addition to the numerous technical complications that investigators face, there are also many legal matters to consider. These legal issues are not secondary considerations whereas having valid search authority is a primary requirement. It is important not overlook or minimize the importance of the legal difficulties surrounding digital forensics investigations.

Managing Next Generation Internet: Issues and Prospects

By Fayaz Akhtar, Mubashir Husain Rehmani, and Alan Davy
Telecommunications Software and Systems Group (TSSG), Waterford Institute of Technology, Waterford, Ireland

Next Generation Internet (NGI) is set to revolutionize our day-to-day lives, especially the way we communicate and interact with the environment. The modern internet has already evolved from a simple two-node experimental interconnection to an enormous commercial network composed of rapidly increasing nodes as well as various end-user applications. While the initial Internet Protocol (IP)-based connectivity among trusted hosts fulfilled the required expectations of a host-to-host communication model, the plethora of emerging network services and the progressing demands for content have exposed the internet’s inherent limitations. These constraints include onsite manual configuration, lack of topological view, complicated management, and static performance models that are typically based on host-centric communication rather than content distribution. In fact current networks based on static topologies already pose severe drawbacks in terms of their expansion. As a way to deal with some of the inefficiencies derived from these drawbacks, the industry and academia alike have advocated for the adoption of novel NGI architectures and paradigms, such as software-defined networking (SDN), network virtualization (NV), and information-centric networking (ICN).

Is blockchain, SDN or a legacy network best for post-market surveillance of medical devices?

By Junaid Chaudhry, Ali Kashif Bashir, Syed Hassan Ahmed, Jon Haas, Guanglou Zheng

Medical devices perform health monitoring, diagnosis and life-saving functions for patients and are within the user domain of Health Information Systems (HIS). These devices include Implantable Medical Devices (IMDs), Medical Devices (MDs), and Medical Support Devices (MSDs) for continuous health monitoring and treatment purposes. Some medical devices can be worn on the body, known as wearable medical devices, while others could be outside the body of patients, (i.e., smart beds, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines and wireless medical telemetry systems.) The HIS are increasingly adopting cloud-based computing systems, and this trend makes medical devices more exposed to the internet and the challenges associated with their governance. In this article, we offer a discussion about three candidate post market governance technologies for the broad range of medical devices.

Blockchain: A Technical Overview

By Javaid Iqbal Zahid, Dr. Alex Ferworn, Dr. Fatima Hussain
Ryerson University, Department of Computer Science

It can be argued that blockchain technology is the real reason for success of cryptocurrencies. From a technical perspective—independent of Bitcoin or other currencies—blockchain can be applied to many scenarios where transaction verification is a must. In fact, many researchers have already started exploring different avenues where modified versions of blockchain technology can be applied to non-financial transactions. Blockchain is a protocol that uses existing cryptographic techniques to ensure the security and privacy of information, its integrity, and provides a mechanism for the authentication of participating entities. This article reviews various cryptographic algorithms that can be implemented in conjunction with blockchain technology. Processing of a message using blockchain is shown in the diagram below.