Abstract: digital criminalistics, having emerged on the theoretical basis of traditional criminology and the practical experience of American and British pioneers-experts on electronic and then digital traces, at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, has developed into an independent most promising direction of development of modern criminalistics, without having any coherent generally accepted concept today.
Information society develops in the real (analog) and virtual (digital) dimensions, in which crimes are also committed, leaving their material and digital traces, which must be used to the maximum extent for the detection, disclosure and investigation of crimes.
With the development of technologies and their use by criminals, digital criminalistics was divided into its own sub-sectors, according to the types of digital devices used (featured in the case): computers, networks, data analysis, examination of mobile devices, etc., going beyond the detection of direct evidence of a crime. Today, digital criminalistics is used to assign evidence to specific suspects, confirm and refute alibis, testimony or intent, and identify sources of document authentication, thus going beyond the traditional narrowly forensic analysis, where the relatively simple goal of getting answers to simple questions has always been set.
Digital criminalistics is developing together with the traditional, on most issues ahead of this development, as its “engine”, hence the task of achieving procedural rational and optimal integration of digital evidence in traditional “analog” evidence of comparability.
Digital criminalistics, having become a common and popular area of scientific research, as a knowledge system is still undergoing a stage of formation, taking into account the rapid growth of technologies and software and hardware, against a relatively slow doctrine that reflects these changes.
The basic concepts of the digital environment are familiar and applied by all participants in legal proceedings, but only in a general, not a special context. Only an expert with special training not just in the field of digital technologies as such (which is also mandatory), but in their forensic application, has special knowledge in the narrow professional meaning of this concept and is able to ensure that the tasks assigned to him are fulfilled.
Keywords: criminalistics, digitalization, computer crimes, digital technologies, expertise