Dilemmas in Digital Forensics for Computer Equipment Security and Maintenance in Remote Ships

As remote ships have equipped a large number of computer equipments, the maintenance of such equipments confronts a great challenge. Since some embedded devices among them may be hacked by attackers or disabled by Byzantine failure, to discover the attacking originality and fault source present foremost importance. In this article, we discuss digital investigation and forensics as a general viewpoint. We point out some dilemmas that hinder the development of digital forensics, some of which may be fundamental problems. We propose to expand the concept of digital forensics to a wider scope so as to include digital investigation for information instead of only evidence. We also argue that the fostering of novel contributions should be relied on technical experts instead of law experts as emerging new techniques always result in new digital crimes. We promote the divorce between the technical experts who focus on the contribution of technologies, and legal authorities who are responsible to bridge the gap between technologies and standard/formalization. Digital forensics methods are encouraged to be publicly available, but the contributors should be aware of the possibility of anti-forensics.