Learn Computer Forensics

▶Book Description
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.

▶What You Will Learn
- Understand investigative processes, the rules of evidence, and ethical guidelines
- Recognize and document different types of computer hardware
- Understand the boot process covering BIOS, UEFI, and the boot sequence
- Validate forensic hardware and software
- Discover the locations of common Windows artifacts
- Document your findings using technically correct terminology

▶Key Features
- Learn the core techniques of computer forensics to acquire and secure digital evidence skillfully
- Conduct a digital forensic examination and document the digital evidence collected
- Analyze security systems and overcome complex challenges with a variety of forensic investigations

▶Who This Book Is For
If you're an IT beginner, student, or an investigator in the public or private sector this book is for you.This book will also help professionals and investigators who are new to incident response and digital forensics and interested in making a career in the cybersecurity domain.

▶What this book covers
- Chapter 1, Types of Computer-Based Investigations, introduces to the reader the different topics of computer-based investigations, from criminal acts investigated by the police to potentially illegal actions performed by an employee or third parties and examined by a non-governmental investigator. While the goal is the same—to present evidence about an incident—the methods of the two slightly differ. It is essential for the reader to understand the similarities, that is, being able to present evidence in judicial proceedings, and recognize the differences, that is, search warrant requirements for a government agent.

- Chapter 2, The Forensic Analysis Process, details the critical thinking in the planning of providing digital investigative services. This topic will allow the reader to create a strategy to conduct an efficient investigation. The reader will learn to offer different approaches to conduct the investigation depending on the unique set of circumstances for each matter.

- Chapter 3, Acquisition of Evidence, explains that digital evidence is one of the most volatile pieces of evidence an investigator can handle. Mishandling of digital evidence can severely impact the investigation. Additionally, you may destroy the entire dataset. This chapter will address how to minimize or eliminate these issues when using a validation process to create a forensic image.

- Chapter 4, Computer Systems, explains that the investigator must control the computer processes while acquiring digital evidence. When dealing with the many combinations of operating systems and hardware, you must implement controls to protect the integrity of the evidence. This chapter will discuss the boot process in detail and identify the most commonly used filesystems.

- Chapter 5, Computer Investigation Process, explains that being a forensic examiner is much more than pushing a button. Once the evidence has been collected, you have to analyze the dataset. It is not about finding artifacts but rather examining the data and putting it into a context that will either support or not support the hypothesis about the user's actions on the system.

- Chapter 6, Windows Artifact Analysis, explains that Microsoft Windows is by far the most common operating system today. In this chapter, we will look at the different versions of Windows and will show the reader how to identify and recover common artifacts based on the release of Windows being examined.

- Chapter 7, RAM Memory Forensic Analysis, covers the analysis of RAM, which is a source of evidence that has recently been recognized to contain vital information about the user's actions on the system. RAM is very volatile evidence and can provide data that cannot be found anywhere else on the computer system.

- Chapter 8, Email Forensics — Investigation Techniques, discusses email, which is a part of everyday life. This communication vector can be one of the primary communication tools for the majority of the population. These communications can contain incredible amounts of data related to an investigation. The investigator must be able to reconstruct the path that email took from the source to the destination to determine its validity.

- Chapter 9, Internet Artifacts, explains that using the internet is a daily activity for the majority of the population. Like any other activity, the internet can be used for legal, law-abiding business, or for criminal activity. The internet can be accessed in a variety of ways. The forensic investigator must be able to analyze all these different aspects of the internet to get to the truth of the matter.

- Chapter 10, Report Writing, covers report writing, which is not the most exciting portion of the forensic exam process. The forensic examiner must be able to explain a technical topic to a non-technical user. As a forensic examiner, you must be able to place that artifact into a context that the audience understands. This ability is a critical skill that you need to master to be a competent forensic examiner.

- Chapter 11, Expert Witness Ethics, explains that a forensic examiner must be objective, truthful, honest, and perform their due diligence when conducting an examination. The examiner will be providing testimony that may result in someone losing their freedom. The ultimate goal of the investigation conducted by the forensic examiner is to provide testimony or evidence in a judicial or administrative proceeding to stop the cybercriminal's activity.