[Book Review] Investigating Internet Crimes

This is a book review for Investigating Internet Crimes, ISBN 0124079296.

This book is an overview on what the title suggested, investigating Internet crimes. With such a broad topic, it generally covers each topic briefly to be 'up and running' with lots of reference links at the end of the chapter. It covers all the major topics, from the alphabet soups of security agencies, to how the Internet works, to collecting and making court-sustaining digital footprint. It even has a page for 'Chat Acronyms' such as BRB, LOL, and text emoticons. It actually brings a smile to my face thinking some 40-yr old cop studying that emoticon page in some dimly lightly backroom trying to catch the bad guys.

As an IT professional, many of the topics such as IP address, DHCP, MAC address, and tools related to Ping, Traceroute were already familiar to me. What was really useful, was the introduction of legally admissible evidence, the different state and federal jurisdictions, and documenting online evidences. It was also handy to be introduced to some of the companies and tools geared toward this particular purpose, such as WebCase and PortableApps.com. The books tries to cover both free and commercial tools, with a bit of a bias toward free tools.

I believe this is a handy book to have, take some of the chapters as 'good to know', while treating some of the chapters more in depth, reading the references at the end. As with many projects, picking the right tools was half of the battle, getting started was sometimes cumbersome, and this book serves as a good starting point for anybody interested in the topic.