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

Static analysis

Static analysis involves examining the actual malware code without executing it on a system. For malware researchers, the code may be obtained from systems that are left out to be deliberately infected, or from production systems that have been impacted by the malware.

In this case, incident response analysts can obtain the code or executable through a combination of memory analysis and acquiring the actual executable while analyzing the hard drive. Static analysis often comprises several different techniques, as follows:

  • Fingerprinting: One of the most basic techniques is obtaining a cryptographical hash of the code. These hashes can then be compared to other known hashes to determine if the code has been seen before.
  • Antivirus scanning: Antivirus vendors often do not catch every virus. For example, some vendors may have analyzed the code and deployed a signature for their product. Other vendors may not have had access to the code or deployed a signature...