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

Creating sterile media 

Sterile media is also a concept that was emphasized when I first trained. Now, there is a discussion regarding whether sterile media is still needed in today's forensic environment. The decision to use sterile media to store the forensic data will be based on the acquisition and the type of examination you will use. Sterile media can be used before the start of the forensic process and at the end of the forensic process. There are multiple reasons to use sterile media, which we will now discuss. When digital forensics was first starting, we did not have the capability to create a forensic image; we were forced to create a forensic copy to perform our examination on. Remember, we talked about a forensic copy in Chapter 2, The Forensic Analysis Process, and defined a forensic copy as follows:

"A straight bit-for-bit copy of the source to the destination. This is not common in today's environment; ensure that your destination...