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

Powered-on versus powered-off device acquisition


When investigating devices that are powered on and powered off, special consideration must be given to the volatility of data. Booting, rebooting, or shutting down a device can cause data to be written to the hard drive or even lost within RAM and the paging file.

Powered-on devices

When investigating a powered-on device the following precautions should be taken:

  • Move the mouse or glide your fingers across the touchpad if you suspect the device may be in a sleep state. Do not click on the buttons as this may open or close programs and processes.
  • Photograph and record the screen and all visible programs, data, time, and desktop items.
  • Unplug the power cord on desktops and remove the battery, if possible, on portables.

It is of utmost important that data stored in RAM and paging files be collected with as little modification to the data as possible. More on this will be covered in later chapters using imaging tools such as Guymager and DC3DD in Kali...