Book Image

Learn Computer Forensics

By : William Oettinger
Book Image

Learn Computer Forensics

By: William Oettinger

Overview of this book

A computer forensics investigator must possess a variety of skills, including the ability to answer legal questions, gather and document evidence, and prepare for an investigation. This book will help you get up and running with using digital forensic tools and techniques to investigate cybercrimes successfully. Starting with an overview of forensics and all the open source and commercial tools needed to get the job done, you'll learn core forensic practices for searching databases and analyzing data over networks, personal devices, and web applications. You'll then learn how to acquire valuable information from different places, such as filesystems, e-mails, browser histories, and search queries, and capture data remotely. As you advance, this book will guide you through implementing forensic techniques on multiple platforms, such as Windows, Linux, and macOS, to demonstrate how to recover valuable information as evidence. Finally, you'll get to grips with presenting your findings efficiently in judicial or administrative proceedings. By the end of this book, you'll have developed a clear understanding of how to acquire, analyze, and present digital evidence like a proficient computer forensics investigator.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
1
Section 1: Acquiring Evidence
6
Section 2: Investigation
12
Section 3: Reporting

Understanding email protocols

An email protocol is a standard that is used to allow two computer hosts to exchange email communication. When an email is sent, it travels from the sender's host to an email server. The email server can forward the email through a series of relays until it arrives at an email server close to the recipient's host. The recipient will receive a notification stating that an email is available; the recipient will then reach out to the email server to get the email.

Users typically use an email client to access emails. An email client can use different protocols to access the email. We will now discuss some email protocols you may come across when conducting a digital forensics investigation.

Understanding SMTP – Simple Mail Transfer Protocol 

SMTP is the protocol for email transmission. It is an internet standard based on RFC 821 but was later updated to RFC 3207, RFC 5321/5322.

Tip

RFC stands...