Computer forensics is a branch of Data Analyzers computer science that deals with internet and computer related crimes. Since we live in a digital age, the importance of computer forensics cannot be understated. Its primary goal is to perform investigations of crimes by the use of evidence collected from digital sources in order to find the culprit.
Popularity of digital forensic tools has spread across multiple Data Analyzers computer and phone platforms over the recent years. This may be in part due to the fact they can be operated with little or no expertise at all. Take a look at some of the Linux digital forensic tools and how to use them;
This toolkit comes as two applications that work together. Autopsy is a graphical user interface that functions on top of the Sleuth Kit. The Sleuth Kit is a toolkit that is capable of performing thorough analysis of different file systems. Some of the features that come with Data Analyzers this toolkit are timeline analysis, file system analysis, hash filtering and keyword searching. With this kit, it is possible to add more modules to increase it functionality.
After executing autopsy, you will need to choose whether to create a new case or load a previous case. If you select create a new case, you will be required to load a forensic image or local disk to start the digital analysis. After the process is complete, the processed results will be accessible in the left pane.
This application comes automatically with most of the Linux distributions available nowadays; such as Ubuntu and Fedora. It is a very versatile tool with regard to different types of functions it is capable of. It can perform functions such as wiping a drive forensically (zeroing a drive) and creating a raw disk image. It is recommended to take extreme care while using dd since it can have devastating effects if not used correctly. ‘dd’ is used by writing commands on the terminal window and executing them so you might want to learn some commands before you use it.
DEFT is a toolkit that has the specific purpose of helping with incident report, cyber intelligence and computer forensic scenarios. It comes with tools for mobile forensics, Data Analyzers and hashing. When loading DEFT as a bootable program, you are presented with the option of loading the live environment or install DEFT to your hard drive. If you select load live environment, you can access the shortcuts in the application menu bar.
This program parses information associated with USB from the registry to provide you with a list of all the USB drives that were connected to a specific machine. It collects information like the name of the USB, serial number, time it was connected to the machine and by whose user account. When you execute USB historian, launch the Data recovery parse wizard by clicking on the plus sign. Select the method you want to use to parse Data Analyzers and then select the data you wish to parse. Once the process is complete, you will be able to get and access the necessary Data Analyzers.
HxD A favorite of many, HxD is a hex editor which enables you to perform manipulation and modification of a raw disk or the random access memory (RAM). Some of the features included are; check-sums, searching and replacing, exporting, file shredder, statistics generation and such . Starting an analysis is as simple as selecting the file menu. Then, click open and then selecting the disk you want to analyze or extras, then open RAM if you want to analyze your RAM.