Book Image

Learn Computer Forensics – 2nd edition - Second Edition

By : William Oettinger
Book Image

Learn Computer Forensics – 2nd edition - Second Edition

By: William Oettinger

Overview of this book

Computer Forensics, being a broad topic, involves a variety of skills which will involve seizing electronic evidence, acquiring data from electronic evidence, data analysis, and finally developing a forensic report. This book will help you to build up the skills you need to work in a highly technical environment. This book's ideal goal is to get you up and running with forensics tools and techniques to successfully investigate crime and corporate misconduct. You will discover ways to collect personal information about an individual from online sources. You will also learn how criminal investigations are performed online while preserving data such as e-mails, images, and videos that may be important to a case. You will further explore networking and understand Network Topologies, IP Addressing, and Network Devices. Finally, you will how to write a proper forensic report, the most exciting portion of the forensic exam process. By the end of this book, you will have developed a clear understanding of how to acquire, analyze, and present digital evidence, like a proficient computer forensics investigator.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
15
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16
Index

Understanding Windows Registry

The Windows Registry is the very heart of the Windows operating system and will be the source of many artifacts we will discuss later in the chapter. First, I will provide a high-level view of the registry. Then, suppose you want to dig deeper into the nuts and bolts of the registry. In that case, I highly recommend Harlan Carvey’s book Windows Registry Forensics – Advanced Digital Forensic Analysis of the Windows Registry. Harlan Carvey is also the developer of the tool RegRipper, which is a tool we will use in this chapter.

What is the registry? Microsoft defines the registry as a central hierarchical database. This database is used to store configuration information about users, hardware devices, and applications.

But what does that mean for the forensic investigator? Windows continually references the information in the registry during operations. Information in the registry will contain profiles for each user, installed applications...