Residue-Free Computing

Abstract

Computer applications often leave traces or residues that enable forensic examiners to gain a detailed understanding of the actions a user performed on a computer. Such digital breadcrumbs are left by a large variety of applications, potentially (and indeed likely) unbeknownst to their users. This paper presents the concept of residue-free computing in which a user can operate any existing application installed on their computer in a mode that prevents trace data from being recorded to disk, thus frustrating the forensic process and enabling more privacy-preserving computing. In essence, residue-free computing provides an “incognito mode” for any application. We introduce our implementation of residue-free computing, ResidueFree, and motivate ResidueFree by inventorying the potentially sensitive and privacy-invasive residue left by popular applications. We demonstrate that ResidueFree allows users to operate these applications without leaving trace data, while incurring modest performance overheads.

Deletion-Compliance in the Absence of Privacy

“…As such they are less interested in removing from a system all traces of data from a particular user, but to ensure that data marked for deletion cannot be recovered with forensics. Arkema and Sherr [AS21] introduce the concept of residue-free computing that provides any application with an incognito mode preventing any trace data from being recorded on disk.…”