Book Image

Digital Forensics and Incident Response - Third Edition

By : Gerard Johansen
5 (1)
Book Image

Digital Forensics and Incident Response - Third Edition

5 (1)
By: Gerard Johansen

Overview of this book

An understanding of how digital forensics integrates with the overall response to cybersecurity incidents is key to securing your organization’s infrastructure from attacks. This updated third edition will help you perform cutting-edge digital forensic activities and incident response with a new focus on responding to ransomware attacks. After covering the fundamentals of incident response that are critical to any information security team, you’ll explore incident response frameworks. From understanding their importance to creating a swift and effective response to security incidents, the book will guide you using examples. Later, you’ll cover digital forensic techniques, from acquiring evidence and examining volatile memory through to hard drive examination and network-based evidence. You’ll be able to apply these techniques to the current threat of ransomware. As you progress, you’ll discover the role that threat intelligence plays in the incident response process. You’ll also learn how to prepare an incident response report that documents the findings of your analysis. Finally, in addition to various incident response activities, the book will address malware analysis and demonstrate how you can proactively use your digital forensic skills in threat hunting. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to investigate and report unwanted security breaches and incidents in your organization.
Table of Contents (28 chapters)
1
Part 1: Foundations of Incident Response and Digital Forensics
6
Part 2: Evidence Acquisition
11
Part 3: Evidence Analysis
17
Part 4: Ransomware Incident Response
20
Part 5: Threat Intelligence and Hunting
Appendix

Prefetch analysis

One question that analysts will often have to answer is determining if an executable has run. One of the best sources of data to answer this question is Prefetch files. When an application or other executable is run, a file is created and stored within the C:\Windows\Prefetch directory. If the program is run in multiple locations, an entry is created for each of these. Another key aspect of Prefetch files is that they are not deleted when the application or program has been deleted. So, if an adversary is attempting to clean up the system of malicious executables or DLL files, proof of their execution may still be located in the Prefetch directory.

The Prefetch files do have some quirks that should be understood. First, even unsuccessful program execution can still produce a Prefetch file. It should be noted that the operative word is can, meaning that not every unsuccessful execution creates a file. Second, the Prefetch directory is specifically limited to 1...