Abstract
Currently on-line gaming represents a severe threat to the forensic community, as criminals have started to use on-line gaming as communication channels instead of traditional channels like WhatsApp or Facebook. In this paper, we describe a methodology developed after conducting an in-depth digital forensic analysis of the central artifacts of a popular video-game - Counter Strike Nexon Zombies video-game (Steam platform) - where valuable artifacts are those that related to the chatting features of the game. For our research we analyzed the network, volatile, and disk captures for two generated cases and focused on chat-feature inside and outside of the in-game rounds and the live chat done through YouTube Live Streaming. Our results provide the forensic community a complete guideline that can be used when dealing with a real criminal case in which there is a Steam video-game involved. Besides the forensic analysis, we found a security vulnerability (session hijacking) which was reported to the game manufacturer as soon it was discovered.
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Notes
- 1.
This vulnerability was reported to Valve Corporation via email as soon as it was discovered.
- 2.
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Acknowledgments
This work has been supported by the CAM grant S2013/ICE-3095 (CIBERDINE: Cybersecurity, Data, and Risks) and by the MINECO grant TIN2016-79095-C2-2-R (SMOG-DEV—Security mechanisms for fog computing: advanced security for devices).
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Appendices
Appendix A List of Tools and Evidences
Appendix B Workflows of Case 1 and 2
Workflow case 1 (Zombi Mode)
Workflow case 2 (Studio Mode)
Appendix C Primary Artifacts
Appendix D Summary of Cases Results
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Tabuyo-Benito, R., Bahsi, H., Peris-Lopez, P. (2019). Forensics Analysis of an On-line Game over Steam Platform. In: Breitinger, F., Baggili, I. (eds) Digital Forensics and Cyber Crime. ICDF2C 2018. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 259. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05487-8_6
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