Book Image

Learning Python for Forensics - Second Edition

By : Preston Miller, Chapin Bryce
Book Image

Learning Python for Forensics - Second Edition

By: Preston Miller, Chapin Bryce

Overview of this book

Digital forensics plays an integral role in solving complex cybercrimes and helping organizations make sense of cybersecurity incidents. This second edition of Learning Python for Forensics illustrates how Python can be used to support these digital investigations and permits the examiner to automate the parsing of forensic artifacts to spend more time examining actionable data. The second edition of Learning Python for Forensics will illustrate how to develop Python scripts using an iterative design. Further, it demonstrates how to leverage the various built-in and community-sourced forensics scripts and libraries available for Python today. This book will help strengthen your analysis skills and efficiency as you creatively solve real-world problems through instruction-based tutorials. By the end of this book, you will build a collection of Python scripts capable of investigating an array of forensic artifacts and master the skills of extracting metadata and parsing complex data structures into actionable reports. Most importantly, you will have developed a foundation upon which to build as you continue to learn Python and enhance your efficacy as an investigator.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)

Introduction to EXIF metadata

EXIF metadata is a standard that's used for image and audio file tags that are created by devices and applications. Most commonly, this kind of embedded metadata is associated with JPEG files. However, EXIF metadata is also present in TIFF, WAV, and other files. In JPEG files, EXIF metadata can contain technical camera settings used to take the photo such as the shutter speed, F-stop, and ISO values. These may not be inherently useful to an examiner, but tags containing the make, model, and GPS location of the photo can be used for attributing an individual to a crime. Each of these elements are associated with a tag. For example, the make metadata is EXIF tag 271 or 0x010F. A list of tags can be found at http://www.exiv2.org/tags.html.

EXIF metadata is stored at the beginning of JPEG images and, if present, is located at byte offset 24. The...