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Digital Forensics with Kali Linux

By : Shiva V. N. Parasram

4.3 (11)

Buy this Book

Digital Forensics with Kali Linux

4.3 (11)

By: Shiva V. N. Parasram

Buy this Book

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.

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

Introduction to Digital Forensics

What is digital forensics?

Digital forensics methodology

A brief history of digital forensics

The need for digital forensics as technology advances

Commercial tools available in the field of digital forensics

Operating systems and open source tools for digital forensics

The need for multiple forensics tools in digital investigations

Anti-forensics: threats to digital forensics

Summary

Installing Kali Linux

Software version

Downloading Kali Linux

Installing Kali Linux

Installing Kali Linux in VirtualBox

Summary

Understanding Filesystems and Storage Media

Storage media

Filesystems and operating systems

What about the data?

Data volatility

The paging file and its importance in digital forensics

Summary

Incident Response and Data Acquisition

Digital evidence acquisitions and procedures

Incident response and first responders

Documentation and evidence collection

Chain of Custody

Powered-on versus powered-off device acquisition

Write blocking

Data imaging and hashing

Device and data acquisition guidelines and best practices

Summary

Evidence Acquisition and Preservation with DC3DD and Guymager

Drive and partition recognition in Linux

Maintaining evidence integrity

Using DC3DD in Kali Linux

Image acquisition using Guymager

Summary

File Recovery and Data Carving with Foremost, Scalpel, and Bulk Extractor

Forensic test images used in Foremost and Scalpel

Using Foremost for file recovery and data carving

Using Scalpel for data carving

Bulk_extractor

Summary

Memory Forensics with Volatility

About the Volatility Framework

Downloading test images for use with Volatility

Using Volatility in Kali Linux

Summary

Autopsy – The Sleuth Kit

Introduction to Autopsy – The Sleuth Kit

Sample image file used in Autopsy

Digital forensics with Autopsy

Summary

Network and Internet Capture Analysis with Xplico

Software required

Packet capture analysis using Xplico

Summary

Revealing Evidence Using DFF

Installing DFF

Summary

Memory Forensics with Volatility

In the previous chapters, we looked at the various types of memory. This included RAM and the swap, or paging, file, which is an area of the hard disk drive which, although slower, functions as RAM. We also discussed the issue of RAM being volatile, meaning that the data in the RAM is easily lost when there is no longer electrical charge or current to the RAM chip. With the data on RAM being the most volatile, it ranks high in the order of volatility and must be forensically acquired and preserved as a matter of high priority.

Many types of data and forensic artifacts reside in RAM and the paging file. As discussed earlier, login passwords, user information, running and hidden processes, and even encrypted passwords are just some of the many types of interesting data that can be found when performing RAM analysis, further compounding the need for...