Book Image

Cloud Forensics Demystified

By : Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Mansoor Haqanee
Book Image

Cloud Forensics Demystified

By: Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Mansoor Haqanee

Overview of this book

As organizations embrace cloud-centric environments, it becomes imperative for security professionals to master the skills of effective cloud investigation. Cloud Forensics Demystified addresses this pressing need, explaining how to use cloud-native tools and logs together with traditional digital forensic techniques for a thorough cloud investigation. The book begins by giving you an overview of cloud services, followed by a detailed exploration of the tools and techniques used to investigate popular cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Progressing through the chapters, you’ll learn how to investigate Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and containerized environments such as Kubernetes. Throughout, the chapters emphasize the significance of the cloud, explaining which tools and logs need to be enabled for investigative purposes and demonstrating how to integrate them with traditional digital forensic tools and techniques to respond to cloud security incidents. By the end of this book, you’ll be well-equipped to handle security breaches in cloud-based environments and have a comprehensive understanding of the essential cloud-based logs vital to your investigations. This knowledge will enable you to swiftly acquire and scrutinize artifacts of interest in cloud security incidents.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Part 1: Cloud Fundamentals
6
Part 2: Forensic Readiness: Tools, Techniques, and Preparation for Cloud Forensics
10
Part 3: Cloud Forensic Analysis – Responding to an Incident in the Cloud

Summary

After diving deep into GCP, we know the GCP infrastructure is very similar to other popular cloud providers. We highlighted the importance of understanding the varying verbosity of logs emitted by GCP services, emphasizing the need for investigators to seek corroborating evidence to confirm events. GCP’s centralized logging system, which flows into Logs Explorer, is a powerful tool for administrators to troubleshoot routine issues and for investigators to delve into event correlations across the GCP ecosystem.

We learned about similarities between how GCP organizes its buckets and objects, which is conceptually similar to AWS. Cloud SCC offers a dashboard or a security scorecard on infrastructure for administrators. At the same time, for investigators, it is a goldmine of findings, with detailed information on where to look when kicking off an investigation. Cloud SCC offers unique insights into vulnerabilities without deploying specific agents within the hosts. Finally...