Notes

Scenario

Scenario. While Australian cities are becoming empowered with AI smart city initiatives, a wave of digital crimes has emerged and conducted by malicious users exploiting AI technologies. A group of hackers has developed advanced AI algorithms capable of autonomously manipulating a city's interconnected systems, including traffic control, surveillance cameras, and public transportation networks. For example, these cybercriminals leverage AI-driven deepfakes to impersonate city officials and make false emergency alerts which cause widespread panic and disruption. Furthermore, they deploy AI-driven malware to target critical infrastructure, such as power grids and water supply networks which lead to service outages and financial losses. Additionally, the group utilizes AI based social engineering techniques to create personalized phishing attacks. These messages are generated based on large number of datasets, i.e., big data, to convince messages tailored to individual citizens. These phishing campaigns exploit citizens' security in and lead to compromised personal data, identity theft, and financial fraud, for example.

Your job: You are a digital crime investigator and receive a call from the Australia Federal Police (AFP) to help with uncovering the intricate pathways through which AI smart city technologies have been weaponized for malicious intent against citizens. You are to consider this scenario and answer the following questions.

Note: Every assumption that you consider in your answers to the questions must be explicated.

Question 1. Describe 5 (five) digital pieces of evidence that you believe are important to conduct forensic examination process in such smart city environment (20 marks).

Hint 1: Module 5 and module 10.

Hint 2: you need to consider Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies along with their relevant components in the context of the scenario.

Question 2. Explain all tasks that you will perform for the investigation. You need to provide a clear example for each task (35 marks)

Hint: For example, Module 3, Processing Crime & Incident Scenes, slide 76, will assist you to interpret and articulate specific tasks for this scenario. You can also check other structured processes for investigation as discussed in other modules, for example, modules 9 and 10.

Question 3. Explain how the concept of scope creep becomes a complex issue for securing diverse devices and systems on such non-wired network of the smart city environment (10 marks).

You need to provide 1 (one) example related to the scenario to support your answer

Hint: Modules 5 and 10.

Question 4. List 4 (four) challenges along with examples for each that you may face during the digital evidence collection (i.e., data acquisition) considering the AI and IoT technologies are used in this scenario. Then, explain your recommendation for each challenge to enable a secure use of devices and systems for mitigating potential security breaches in this smart city scenario (20 marks).

Question 5. Which tool(s) will you use to critically examine cyber security breaches relevant to collected five (5) digital evidence that you suggested in Question 1? Explain your reason with example(s) relevant to the case (15 marks).

Hint 1: you can propose the digital forensics tools that you either learned about during the course or any other digital forensics tools beyond what we covered in the course, i.e., modules 5 and 9.

Hint 2: the choice and number of tools, which can be one or more to use for the five (5) digital evidence, is your completely decision.

Hint 3. Module 6, Current Digital Forensics Tools, slide 14, 35, and 36, is where you can find some tips to support your tool choice in the context of this scenario.