Book Image

Digital Forensics with Kali Linux - Second Edition

By : Shiva V. N. Parasram
Book Image

Digital Forensics with Kali Linux - Second 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. It has a wide range of tools to help for digital forensics investigations and incident response mechanisms. This updated second edition of Digital Forensics with Kali Linux covers the latest version of Kali Linux and The Sleuth Kit. You'll get to grips with modern techniques for analysis, extraction, and reporting using advanced tools such as FTK Imager, hex editor, and Axiom. Updated to cover digital forensics basics and advancements in the world of modern forensics, this book will also delve into the domain of operating systems. Progressing 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. The book will also show you how to create forensic images of data and maintain integrity using hashing tools. Finally, you'll cover advanced topics such as autopsies and acquiring investigation data from networks, operating system memory, and quantum cryptography. By the end of this book, you'll have gained hands-on experience of implementing all the pillars of digital forensics: acquisition, extraction, analysis, and presentation, all using Kali Linux tools.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
1
Section 1: Kali Linux – Not Just for Penetration Testing
4
Section 2: Forensic Fundamentals and Best Practices
7
Section 3: Forensic Tools in Kali Linux
12
Section 4: Automated Digital Forensic Suites
16
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What about the data?

In this chapter so far, we've looked at the various media for storing data. Now, I'd like to talk about the actual data itself, some of its states, and what happens when it's accessed.

Data states

Firstly, there's data in transit, also called data in motion. These states describe data on the move, perhaps traversing across the network between devices or even between storage media, actively moving between locations.

Then there's data in use. Data in this state is currently being accessed by a user or processed by a CPU. When data is accessed from the hard drive, it is temporarily stored in RAM, which is much faster than the hard drive (particularly mechanical drives) and stored there for as long as the user accesses it and there is power to the device.

When data is not in motion, transit, or in use, it is described as data at rest. In this state, the data rests or resides on non-volatile media such as hard drives, optical media...