Book Image

Windows Forensics Analyst Field Guide

By : Muhiballah Mohammed
5 (1)
Book Image

Windows Forensics Analyst Field Guide

5 (1)
By: Muhiballah Mohammed

Overview of this book

In this digitally driven era, safeguarding against relentless cyber threats is non-negotiable. This guide will enable you to enhance your skills as a digital forensic examiner by introducing you to cyber challenges that besiege modern entities. It will help you to understand the indispensable role adept digital forensic experts play in preventing these threats and equip you with proactive tools to defend against ever-evolving cyber onslaughts. The book begins by unveiling the intricacies of Windows operating systems and their foundational forensic artifacts, helping you master the art of streamlined investigative processes. From harnessing opensource tools for artifact collection to delving into advanced analysis, you’ll develop the skills needed to excel as a seasoned forensic examiner. As you advance, you’ll be able to effortlessly amass and dissect evidence to pinpoint the crux of issues. You’ll also delve into memory forensics tailored for Windows OS, decipher patterns within user data, and log and untangle intricate artifacts such as emails and browser data. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to robustly counter computer intrusions and breaches, untangle digital complexities with unwavering assurance, and stride confidently in the realm of digital forensics.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
1
Part 1:Windows OS Forensics and Lab Preparation
7
Part 2:Windows OS Additional Artifacts

Exploring a real-world scenario of identifying the root cause

The cybersecurity team reported an alert triggered on hostname (DESKTOP-T7HCR2I) for a malicious hacking tool, and during the investigation, the team could not identify the root cause. As digital forensic examiners, we are now tasked with identifying the source of the malicious binary and reporting back to the cybersecurity team.

One of the things we check during such an incident is what log source types we have and how we can find our evidence to map it for the current incident. Since we are focusing on Windows artifacts, we need a way to pull the triage image over the network or we can perform that locally. In the real world, usually, we use tools such as endpoint detection and response to access the endpoint directly and collect the desired artifacts. However, in our lab scenario, we will perform manual collection using KAPE, as we covered it in Chapter 2.

By running the following KAPE script, we will collect our...