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

Data imaging and hashing


Imaging refers to the exact copying of data either as a file, folder, partition, or entire storage media or drive. When doing a regular copy of files and folders, not all files may be copied based on their attributes being set to the system or even hidden. To prevent files from being left out, we perform a special type of copy where every bit is copied or imaged exactly as it is on the current medium, as if taking a picture or snapshot of the data.

Creating a copy of each bit of data exactly as is, is referred to as a Physical Image. Performing a Bitstream copy ensures the integrity of the copy. To further prove this, a hash of the original evidence and the physical image are calculated and compared. If the copy is off by even one bit of data, the hash values will be quite different.

Note

The original evidence should only be handled by qualified and authorized professionals and should also only be used to create forensically sound physical images. The original evidence...