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 the boot process

In order to control the environment as we start our investigation, we must understand the environment. Here, digital evidence is being stored, created, and accessed. In most cases, this will be a computer system. I use the term "computer system," and what that comprises is the operating system, the filesystem, and the hardware bundled together to create a computer. To be effective, you must understand the physical media the data is stored on, the filesystem used on the storage device, and how that data is tracked and accessed while on the storage device. Once you understand the process, you can then implement controls to protect the integrity of the digital evidence.

So, what is the boot process? Well, when you push the power button and electricity energizes the system, a series of commands is issued. As it executes the commands, the system is taking steps (just like on a ladder) to achieve the goal of a running operating system. If something...