Improving evidence acquisition from live network sources

The pervasiveness of network technology is causing a shift in the location of digital evidence. What was once largely found on individual disks tied to single individuals is now becoming distributed across remote networked machines, under the control of multiple organizations, and scattered over multiple jurisdictions. The network interactions between these machines are also becoming recognized as a source of network evidence. These live network sources of evidence bring additional challenges which need to be addressed. This paper discusses these issues and suggests some improvements in the methods used for the collection of evidence from live network sources.