In today’s hectic time, you may have accumulated hundreds if not thousands of important files over time. Imagine now, if one day you turn on your laptop or PC and find the files of your customers’ or even your vacation photos are no longer accessible. They are gone. You cant retrieve them. All your life’s work is gone for good. How did this happen you ask yourself? Well there are many factors that contribute to the loss or destruction of files.

External environment factors:

• Lightening,
• Power surges,
• Power outages

Often leads to electric fluctuations in electricity causing damage to the hard drive of the PC or laptop. This fluctuation is common in areas where power lines are found above ground that are exposed to the harsh elements such as areas in the US Midwest. Being in the city however does not guarantee constant flowing electricity. Power outages can occur wherever external electricity is provided.

• Flooding,
• Tornadoes,
• Fires,
• Exposure to sea air

Are other possible causes of file damage.

The internal environments of the office or studio are not free from data destruction;

• Dry air leads to static charge buildup that upon contact with the hard drive can simply fry the drive.
• Humidity levels in the building may result in condensation to develop on the computer.
• Coffee spills, dust, water sprinklers, all can lead to damage.
• Theft either in the form of Internet hacking or burglary will definitely remove important files.

The key to protect data is of course getting a good backup system. In today’s market the consumer has a vast choice of products each with its own pluses and minuses. Some of the top names include acronis, backupchain, and carbonite.

IPv6 allows for better scalability with networks and supplies what seems like a limitless amount of IP addresses to use. IPv6 provides the following enhancements:

• Larger address space – IPv6 address are 128 bits which is 4 times larger than IPv6′s size of 32 bits. IPv4 had approximately 4,200,000,000 possible address while IPv6 has 3.4 x 10(38) possible addresses. The number is so big that it is alot simpler to see it in arithmetic form!
• Simplified header – IPv6 has a simpler header compared to IPv4 which allows for fast processing. IPv6 is designed in a way that check-sums aren’t needed to be computed at every node unlike IPv4.
• Support for mobility and security – Mobility and security help ensure compliance with mobile IP and IP security (IPsec) standards. IPv6 provides a standard that allows IP addresses to move across areas without breaking the established connection. IPsec is also enabled by default for all IPv6 devices. IPv4 doesn’t provide either mobility or IPsec security options by default.

IPv6 has three main types of addresses that are similar and different from IPv4:

• Unicast – Similar to an IPv4 unicast address, an IPv6 unicast address is for a single interface. Like IPv4, a subnet prefix is associated with each address. The two different types of unicast addresses are global aggregatable and link-local
• Anycast – Is a new address type that is assigned to a set of interfaces on different devices using IPv6. A packet that is sent to an anycast address goes to the closest interface identified by thr anycast address. Therefore all nodes using the same anycast addess should provide the same type of service.
• Multicast – An IPv6 multicast address identifies a set of interfaces on different devices. A packet sent to a multicast address is delivered to all the interfaces that is apart of that multicast group similar to IPv4.

IPv6 doesn’t have broadcast address like IPv4 does. Broadcasts are replaced by multicasts and anycasts. Multicast enables efficient network operation by using a number of specific multicast groups to send requests to a limited number of computers on a network. Multicast groups prevent most of the problems that happens with broadcast storms on IPv4.

After noticing a recent news article from Australia, I was surprised to find that a US and Japanese based video game company was bringing a law suit forth to an Australian man who violated international and US and Australian copyright laws. After an Australian game store accidentally released the new Super Mario Brothers game for their Wii system six days before Nintendo had scheduled a global release, a 24 year old Australian named James Burt broke through the game’s code and illegally uploaded the game to the internet, allowing thousands to download the game illegally onto their own computers without paying Nintendo any money. This perhaps cost Nintendo millions of dollars.

So how did Nintendo track down Mr. Burt from the hundreds of millions of computer users across the world, to the millions in Australia, to those in his area, to find out that he was the one who illegally uploaded the game? They used computer forensics specialists, trained to trace the tracks of Internet usage to find the source of the uploaded games.

Nintendo’s forensic specialists, trained in top computer forensics programs, were able to trace all downloads of the game, starting from the beginning. Once the original download was found, the upload was traced by time and IP address. Using computer forensics tracking programs, Mr. Burt’s IP address was matched with his location and he was apprehended by local law enforcement.

The next step for the computer forensics specialists was to present the information and evidence they were able to uncover during their investigation to the lawyers and judge in the courts, where Mr. Burt was found guilty of illegally uploading property belonging to Nintendo, and distributing it without Nintendo’s consent. The courts in Australia found Mr. Burt liable for $1.3 million USD toward Nintendo’s lost earnings. Additionally, $100,000 of Nintendo’s accrued legal fees were also designated to be paid by the defendant.

If it weren’t for the expert specialists working for Nintendo, the company would not have been able to locate the defendant and most likely would not have been able to recoup the millions of dollars in lost revenue. Proof that computer forensics and forensic science is not all murder and mystery, but used every day to solve all types of modern-day crimes and investigations.