Book Image

Computer Forensics with FTK

By : Fernando Carbone
Book Image

Computer Forensics with FTK

By: Fernando Carbone

Overview of this book

<p>With the increase of electronic crimes and the need to constantly audit the proper use of resources, companies need qualified professionals and appropriate tools to carry out these activities. The FTK platform, with the ability to collect and analyze digital evidence quickly and with integrity, is a great solution to help professionals achieve these goals. It is extremely useful for conducting digital investigations, helping you conduct a thorough investigation through a single tool and ensure the integrity of evidence. It is hard to find technical information on this tool and that’s where this book will come in handy, helping professionals perform their activities with greater excellence.</p> <p>This tutorial leads by example, providing you with everything you need to use FTK and the tools included such as FTK Imager, Registry View, and PRTK in order to enhance your Computer Forensics knowledge in an easier and more efficient way.</p> <p>You will be introduced to the background of Computer Forensics, which include the types of digital devices that can be acquired and how to prepare for a new case of investigation. You will become acquainted with the FTK architecture and learn how to leverage its features in order to help you find the evidence as fast as possible. Through this book, you will also learn the memory forensics technique using the memory dump feature of FTK Imager. Furthermore, you will learn how to extract some important information such as process and DLL information, Sockets, and Driver List Open Handles.</p> <p>To conclude your tutorial, you will learn how to extract information from Windows Registry and how to recover passwords from the system and files. You will find this book an invaluable supplement to teach you all the steps required for the completion of investigations on digital media and to generate consistent and irrefutable evidence in court.</p>
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
Computer Forensics with FTK
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.packtpub.com
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Getting Started with Computer Forensics Using FTK
Index

Acquisition tools


FTK Imager makes a bit-for-bit duplicate image of the media, avoiding accidental manipulation of the original evidence. The forensic image is an identical copy of the original device, which includes the file slack and unallocated space, and allows for the recovery of deleted files. The forensic duplication allows you to conduct the investigation process using the image, preserving the original media.

The analysis of the acquired image can be performed later in the FTK, which allows for a much more detailed investigation and the generation of the final report of the information found.

When you use FTK Imager to create a forensic image of a hard drive or other electronic device, ensure that you are using a hardware-based write blocker. By doing this, you can be certain that the system does not alter the original source at the time of attaching it to your computer.

In the following picture, you can see a sample of the write blocker device: