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)

An introduction to libpff

The libpff library allows us to reference and navigate through PST objects in a programmatic manner. The root_folder() function allows us to reference RootFolder, which is the base of the PST file and the starting point for our recursive analysis of email content. Within RootFolder are folders and messages. The folders can contain other sub-folders or messages. Folders have properties that include the name of the folder, the number of subfolders, and the number of submessages. Messages are objects representing messages and have attributes, including the subject line, the name of all participants, and several timestamps.

How to install libpff and pypff

Installing some third-party libraries is more...