Book Image

Practical Digital Forensics

By : Richard Boddington
Book Image

Practical Digital Forensics

By: Richard Boddington

Overview of this book

Digital Forensics is a methodology which includes using various tools, techniques, and programming language. This book will get you started with digital forensics and then follow on to preparing investigation plan and preparing toolkit for investigation. In this book you will explore new and promising forensic processes and tools based on ‘disruptive technology’ that offer experienced and budding practitioners the means to regain control of their caseloads. During the course of the book, you will get to know about the technical side of digital forensics and various tools that are needed to perform digital forensics. This book will begin with giving a quick insight into the nature of digital evidence, where it is located and how it can be recovered and forensically examined to assist investigators. This book will take you through a series of chapters that look at the nature and circumstances of digital forensic examinations and explains the processes of evidence recovery and preservation from a range of digital devices, including mobile phones, and other media. This book has a range of case studies and simulations will allow you to apply the knowledge of the theory gained to real-life situations. By the end of this book you will have gained a sound insight into digital forensics and its key components.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Practical Digital Forensics
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgment
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Describing filesystems that contain evidence


The way file information is stored varies among different operating systems. In the interest of clarity, they will be presented in the setting of the Windows filesystem environment, which is the most widely used operating system at present. However, Chapter 7, Windows and Other Operating Systems as Sources of Evidence, describes other operating systems in more detail and the files and filesystems they use. Files themselves may be looked at from different perspectives, and the way Windows catalogs them is a benefit to forensic examination.

Commands received from the operating system in order to read and write files are interpreted in a directory structure, incorporating a file index system that defines file naming protocols and the maximum size of the file. Microsoft operating systems manage these records in a Master File Table (MFT), where information is cataloged for every file and directory. The table is essentially a relational database table...