J-Michael Roberts

J-Michael Roberts is a court-tested forensic examiner and expert witness who has testified in the matters that define the field: an international hacking and insider-trading conspiracy prosecuted in the District of Massachusetts (USA v. Klyushin), data-breach claims spanning multiple Linux servers in an international arbitration before the ICDR, and a Rhode Island federal case in which his analysis of multiple digital devices proved the willful destruction, manipulation, and forgery of evidence and false testimony, leading to summary judgment against the perpetrators. As a Senior Director at Law and Forensics and head of the firm's New York office, he brings findings that hold up under cross-examination in US District Court, state court, and international arbitration alike.

What sets J-Michael apart is the rare combination of a builder's instinct and an examiner's discipline. He created and still maintains VirusShare, one of the most widely used malware repositories in the security community, and built the Black Harrier Linux Distribution for forensic analysis. At Stroz Friedberg, where he rose to Vice President of Incident Response, he engineered specialized, rapidly deployable hardware that let his teams stand up a secure, portable forensic network inside a compromised client environment, enabling preservation, analysis, and remediation where remote access or endpoint detection and response was neither permitted nor practical. That engineering depth lets him not only examine evidence but interrogate the tools that produce it. In one mobile matter he identified a flaw in a commercial forensic tool whose antivirus engine failed to flag dormant ransomware, clearing an accused individual of viewing prohibited content.

His casework reaches the highest-stakes corners of digital conflict. He commanded incident-response teams investigating the state-sponsored theft of intellectual property at a credit-rating agency and the compromise of customer data at a multinational financial services firm, the latter leading to the arrest and prosecution of the intruders, and briefed executive leadership and US federal law enforcement throughout. He has assisted the Department of Justice in prosecuting the administrator of a dark-web marketplace on the Tor network, teamed with Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit on the coordinated takedown of the Zeus and Citadel botnet command-and-control infrastructure, and traced the phishing and theft of more than $650M in cryptocurrency from a custodial wallet, proving the exchange had known of the same attack techniques for years, a finding that resulted in full restoration of the customer's funds.

J-Michael's path to forensics ran through architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and more than a decade of senior systems and IT administration before he turned to malware reverse engineering and digital investigations, a foundation that informs how he reads systems under attack. He holds the GIAC Reverse-Engineering Malware (GREM) certification from the SANS Institute and the Certified Computer Examiner (CCE) credential from the International Society of Forensic Computer Examiners, and is a member of the ISFCE and the High Technology Crime Investigation Association. He also teaches what he practices, lecturing lawyers on digital forensics through the Legal Cyber Academy.