Like Sherlock Holmes ... How Does Digital Forensics Track Corona Virus?

Dr. Amir Al-Namrat * and Nicolas Shimillo **

In attempting to solve crime cases, digital forensic investigators in the public and private sectors use various methods and tools to identify, collect, and analyze data obtained from digital devices such as mobile phones. How can these methods be used to track the new Corvand-19 virus?

The Coruna virus - which first appeared in Wuhan, China last December - killed more than 2,800 people, infected more than 85,000, and the World Health Organization officially declared a global health emergency.

By analyzing the telephone records of people with diseases such as the Corona virus, digital forensics can determine the geographical areas of potential infection and outbreak. The best example of this is Steve Walsh.

Steve Walsh is the man who caused 11 cases in the UK of Coronavirus, identified by using telephone records analysis.

The 53-year-old has been described as a "great distributor", carrying the virus at a business conference in Singapore before a ski holiday in the French Alps on January 24.

Walsh returned to the UK four days later, and was diagnosed on February 6 in Brighton.

It was recognized that five of the cases related to Mr. Walsh were in England, five in France, and one in Mallorca, Spain.

The analysis process
This method is investigated by making a plan that links all the cell towers of the concerned phones, thus proceeding with the appropriate health measures to contain the epidemic.

Coverage surveys are done using custom tools, called "BTS Trackers", which specifically search for all active cell towers in that region and record their true coverage.

This research helps to define and understand how cell towers actually perform and connect them to mobile devices, gain a deeper understanding of the digital environment that surrounds us, and audit and control research and mapping device movements.

By tracking communications with cell towers and movements made by telephones, information obtained from phone records is obtained, and therefore definite and definitive facts can be reached, within a relatively short time, as there is no room to waste time.

Once a place of interest is traced, the true coverage of the cell towers related to the subject matter is determined.

This may lead later to reveal, for example, that a person could have been in another part of the city in contact with other people who had not been thought about before and who were carrying the virus.

This thorough and comprehensive analysis allows researchers to improve and expand potential contamination by understanding whether or not the cell tower connected to the user’s device covers, for example, the interior of a public building, and then verifies the hypothesis that this person may have been there.

This method helps to accelerate the improvement of health measures that focus on searching for other potential infection areas and reducing the spread of the virus.
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* Dr. Amir Al-Namrat is a professor at the College of Engineering and Computer at the University of East London, and director of the Master's Program in Information Security and Forensic Evidence.
** Nikola Shimilo is CEO of SecureCube.