Book Image

Digital Forensics and Incident Response

By : Gerard Johansen
Book Image

Digital Forensics and Incident Response

By: Gerard Johansen

Overview of this book

Digital Forensics and Incident Response will guide you through the entire spectrum of tasks associated with incident response, starting with preparatory activities associated with creating an incident response plan and creating a digital forensics capability within your own organization. You will then begin a detailed examination of digital forensic techniques including acquiring evidence, examining volatile memory, hard drive assessment, and network-based evidence. You will also explore the role that threat intelligence plays in the incident response process. Finally, a detailed section on preparing reports will help you prepare a written report for use either internally or in a courtroom. By the end of the book, you will have mastered forensic techniques and incident response and you will have a solid foundation on which to increase your ability to investigate such incidents in your organization.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Chapter 7. Analyzing System Memory

For the longest time, law enforcement and other organizations performing digital forensic tasks associated with incident investigations often relied on methodologies that focused on evidence contained within the hard drive. Procedures dictated that the system be powered down and the hard drive removed for imaging. While this methodology and associated procedures were effective at ensuring the integrity of the evidence, this overlooked the wealth of information that was contained within the Random Access Memory (RAM), or memory for short, of the targeted system. As a result, incident response analysts began to focus a great deal of attention on ensuring that appropriate methods were employed that maintained the integrity of this evidence, as well as giving them a platform in which to obtain information of evidentiary value.

This chapter will focus on the types of evidence that can be located within the memory of a system, the tools and techniques available...