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

Identifying sources of memory

What happens if you are not the investigator on the scene when the digital evidence is collected in the RAM, and they do not collect volatile data? Is it possible to still access the RAM, despite having the system shut down? While you cannot analyze the RAM, it is possible to examine other sources may contain the same data that was stored in the RAM. This option may not always be viable, depending on the specific set of circumstances surrounding the seizure of the digital evidence.

You need to know that there are potential additional sources that will contain the same or similar data that was in RAM. They are as follows:

  • Hibernation file (hiberfill.sys): Hibernation is the process of powering down the computer while still maintaining the current state of the system. In Windows, the RAM is compressed and stored in a hiberfill.sys file. This will allow the system to power down completely, but when the system is reactivated, the contents of the...