Book Image

Digital Forensics with Kali Linux

Book Image

Digital Forensics with Kali Linux

Overview of this book

Kali Linux is a Linux-based distribution used mainly for penetration testing and digital forensics. It has a wide range of tools to help in forensics investigations and incident response mechanisms. You will start by understanding the fundamentals of digital forensics and setting up your Kali Linux environment to perform different investigation practices. The book will delve into the realm of operating systems and the various formats for file storage, including secret hiding places unseen by the end user or even the operating system. The book will also teach you to create forensic images of data and maintain integrity using hashing tools. Next, you will also master some advanced topics such as autopsies and acquiring investigation data from the network, operating system memory, and so on. The book introduces you to powerful tools that will take your forensic abilities and investigations to a professional level, catering for all aspects of full digital forensic investigations from hashing to reporting. By the end of this book, you will have had hands-on experience in implementing all the pillars of digital forensics—acquisition, extraction, analysis, and presentation using Kali Linux tools.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
Disclaimer
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
10
Revealing Evidence Using DFF

The paging file and its importance in digital forensics


Operating systems have the ability to use a portion of the hard disk as an extension of RAM. This is referred to as virtual memory, and is usually a good idea if a computer or laptop has limited RAM. Although the hard drive is much slower than the RAM, the swap file or paging file on the disk can store files and programs that are being accessed less, leaving the RAM available to store data being frequently accessed. This process involves the OS swapping pages of data less frequently used, and moving data to the dedicated paging file area on the hard drive.

In forensics investigations, the paging file is very important to us. Although not as volatile as RAM itself due to being stored on the hard disk, it is a hidden file in Windows called pagefile.sys, and should always be inspected using tools of your choice, as this file may reveal passwords for encrypted areas, information from sites visited, documents opened, logged-in users, printed...