Book Image

Practical Digital Forensics

By : Richard Boddington
Book Image

Practical Digital Forensics

By: Richard Boddington

Overview of this book

Digital Forensics is a methodology which includes using various tools, techniques, and programming language. This book will get you started with digital forensics and then follow on to preparing investigation plan and preparing toolkit for investigation. In this book you will explore new and promising forensic processes and tools based on ‘disruptive technology’ that offer experienced and budding practitioners the means to regain control of their caseloads. During the course of the book, you will get to know about the technical side of digital forensics and various tools that are needed to perform digital forensics. This book will begin with giving a quick insight into the nature of digital evidence, where it is located and how it can be recovered and forensically examined to assist investigators. This book will take you through a series of chapters that look at the nature and circumstances of digital forensic examinations and explains the processes of evidence recovery and preservation from a range of digital devices, including mobile phones, and other media. This book has a range of case studies and simulations will allow you to apply the knowledge of the theory gained to real-life situations. By the end of this book you will have gained a sound insight into digital forensics and its key components.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Practical Digital Forensics
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgment
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

The special characteristics of digital evidence


It will perhaps be useful for you to get some explanation as to what the courts consider to be acceptable and unacceptable evidence. There are different categories of evidence tendered in legal proceedings. The most common is direct evidence, sometimes called witness or testimonial evidence. This is evidence of events observed by the witness and depends on the credibility of the witness in terms of the reliability of the witness's memory, honesty, objectivity, and so on. Such witness testimony may be challenged and refuted, but it often goes a long way in establishing the truth of a matter before the court.

Human testimony must be based on human observation—an eyewitness account, as it is often called. It may be something the witness directly heard, felt, smelled, tasted, or touched, but it must not be hearsay evidence or layperson opinion. Hearsay evidence is any matter relevant to a case that a witness has not observed personally through...