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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Scalpel was created as an improvement of a much earlier version of foremost. Scalpel aims to address the high CPU and RAM usage issues of foremost when carving data.

Specifying file types in Scalpel

Unlike foremost, file types of interest must be specified by the investigator in the Scalpel configuration file. This file is called scalpel.conf and is located at etc/scapel/:

Figure 6.24 – Scalpel configuration file location 

To specify the file types, the investigator must remove the comments at the start of the line containing the file type as all supported file types are commented out with a hashtag at the beginning of the file type. The following screenshot shows the default Scalpel configuration file (scalpel.conf) with all the file types commented out. Notice that each line begins with a hashtag:

Figure 6.25 – All file types not selected as represented by the # 

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