Book Review: Cyber Lies - When Finding The Truth Matters by John Paul Lucich

If you suspect that your spouse is cheating on you then this might be the self-help book you need. Mr. Lucich is a data forensics expert with over 20 years of hard-earned experience. He has worked with different branches of the US government and is recognized as an expert and pioneer in the field. The premise behind Cyber Lies is that living in this wonderful, technology-rich, time the cheating spouse may leave tell-tale signs on both the home computer and their cell phone.

This do-it-yourself guide reveals to the reader how even with limited technical ability it is possible to plumb the depths of hard drives and other data storage devices to locate hidden or deleted information. The instructions are given in an easy to follow step by step way, but as a writer of computer-related books I feel that he could have created a simpler instruction set by including some pictures and diagrams rather than straight text.

It does not matter what branch of forensics you talk about, criminal, financial, or computer, the common theme is to keep the evidence pristine. To modify it in anyway invalidates its usefulness as evidence. Mr. Lucich preaches this throughout the book, however, some of the techniques that he proposes are so prone to ‘accidents’, that I am not sure that I would recommend that the computer novice try them.

There is nothing wrong with deviling around in the Windows profile areas, the cache, maybe even the Windows Registry, but physically removing hard drives to image them may be a little advanced for a novice. There are many things that can go wrong once you remove a hard drive, and if you are not very careful, instead of leaving no fingerprints, you may well leave lots of big muddy footprints!

On the upside, I did find the cell phone information interesting. There is a lot of information that can be gleaned from a cell phone if you know where to look. He does a good job of discussing this relatively new forensic area. Although I am not quite sure where the average novice user would find a Faraday Cage to perform part of the data extraction that he details. I am pretty certain that my local Wall Mart does not sell them!

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Article Author: Simon Barrett

Simon is an Educator in Calgary, Alberta. His own piece of idiocy is zzsimonb's rantings and he is also a contibuting editor for Blogger News Network.

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