CRIMINAL investigations will benefit if a straightforward modification is made to computer operating systems, say engineers.
Computers which are part of a crime scene are usually taken to a police lab, but to do this means switching them off and losing any data stored in the random access memory (RAM). Now researchers at the University of Western Sydney and the University of Newcastle in Australia suggest modifying operating systems to avoid this (Digital Investigation, DOI: 10.1016/j.diin.2008.02.001).
Computers installed in ATM machines already store a copy of their RAM data on hard disc, allowing rapid recovery after a crash.…
