The internet today is a massive place consisting of over 165 millions websites according to Netcraft. These sites enable everyday users to communicate and interact with each other in a variety of ways. Without the internet most of the younger generation would be lost and the world would not function as it does today. This can also be said for criminals, the internet has opened up a whole new world for hacking, fraud, robbery and even child porn.

All of these issues can be very difficult to track down and when they are there is then the difficult task of collecting evidence, most of which can be obtained from the computer(s) the person or persons were using at the time of committing the crime. The process of scanning these computers for evidence can be very time consuming taking weeks or even months.

This should now no longer be the case as Microsoft has developed as small device that investigators can use to extract forensic data from computers used for committing crime, in a very short period of time.

The COFEE as it has been named stands for “Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor”. It is essentially a USB stick that was quietly distributed to a handful of law-enforcement agencies last June. The device contains 150 commands that can dramatically cut the time it takes to gather digital evidence. This is becoming more and more important in real-world crime, as well as cybercrime. It can decrypt passwords and analyze a computer's Internet activity, as well as data stored in the computer.

This will mean quicker turn around for criminal cases, as there will be little waiting around for computer evidence to be collected and so we should also see an increase in internet crime cases solved, that is if the police can catch the criminals first.