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

Determining file knowledge

Some incidents you investigate may deal with contraband images, stolen data, or unlawful access to data. You will have to determine whether the user had knowledge of the file(s) in question, or whether the file(s) existed on the user’s system.

We will now talk about some artifacts you can find in the Windows operating system that will help you make that determination.

Exploring the thumbcache

A thumbcache is a database of thumbnail images created when using Windows Explorer in a thumbnail view. Depending on the size of the thumbnail, you may have multiple databases with the same image but with different sizes. It depends on the view the user selected while in Windows Explorer. The existence of an image found in the database is not substantial proof that the user knew the image was on the system. The system can add a thumbnail to the cache without the user’s knowledge. The thumbcache can be found in the user’s profile at the...