Book Image

Digital Forensics with Kali Linux - Third Edition

By : Shiva V. N. Parasram
Book Image

Digital Forensics with Kali Linux - Third Edition

By: Shiva V. N. Parasram

Overview of this book

Kali Linux is a Linux-based distribution that's widely used for penetration testing and digital forensics. This third edition is updated with real-world examples and detailed labs to help you take your investigation skills to the next level using powerful tools. This new edition will help you explore modern techniques for analysis, extraction, and reporting using advanced tools such as FTK Imager, Hex Editor, and Axiom. You’ll cover the basics and advanced areas of digital forensics within the world of modern forensics while delving into the domain of operating systems. As you advance through the chapters, you'll explore various formats for file storage, including secret hiding places unseen by the end user or even the operating system. You’ll also discover how to install Windows Emulator, Autopsy 4 in Kali, and how to use Nmap and NetDiscover to find device types and hosts on a network, along with creating forensic images of data and maintaining integrity using hashing tools. Finally, you'll cover advanced topics such as autopsies and acquiring investigation data from networks, memory, and operating systems. By the end of this digital forensics book, you'll have gained hands-on experience in implementing all the pillars of digital forensics: acquisition, extraction, analysis, and presentation – all using Kali Linux's cutting-edge tools.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
1
Part 1: Blue and Purple Teaming Fundamentals
7
Part 2: Digital Forensics and Incident Response Fundamentals and Best Practices
10
Part 3: Kali Linux Digital Forensics and Incident Response Tools
15
Part 4: Automated Digital Forensics and Incident Response Suites
18
Part 5: Network Forensic Analysis Tools

Creating strong hashes for evidence integrity

To provide proof that evidence was not tampered with, a cryptographic algorithm must be run against the evidence drive before, during, and after a forensic acquisition. These algorithms produce an output string (or hash output) of hexadecimal characters (a–f and 0–9) of various lengths, depending on their strength.

Common cryptographic algorithms are as follows:

  • MD5: Message Digest 5
  • SHA-1: Secure Hash Algorithm version 1
  • SHA-256: SHA-2 256-bit

Note

More information on cryptographic hashes can be found at https://www.tutorialspoint.com/cryptography/cryptography_hash_functions.htm.

In Kali Linux, we can use the md5sum, sha1sum, or sha256sum commands, followed by the path of the device, to create a hash output of the evidence/input file. For example, to create a SHA-256 hash, we would use the following command, where sdx represents the drive we are trying to acquire or image:

Sha256sum /dev...