You're reading from Windows Forensics Cookbook

Product typeBook

Published inAug 2017

Publisher

ISBN-139781784390495

Edition1st Edition

Tools

Windows OS

Concepts

Forensics

Authors (2):

Scar de Courcier

Oleg Skulkin

View More author details

Preface

Windows Forensics Cookbook covers recipes to overcome challenges and carry out effective investigations easily on a Windows platform. You will begin with a refresher of Digital Forensics and Evidence Acquisition, which will help you to understand the challenges faced while acquiring evidence from Windows systems. Next, you will learn how to acquire Windows memory and analyze Windows systems with modern forensic tools. The book will also cover more in-depth elements of forensic analysis, such as how to analyze data from Windows system artifacts, parsing data from the most commonly-used web browsers and email clients, and effective reporting in digital forensic investigations.

You will learn how Windows 10 is different from previous versions and how you can overcome the specific challenges it brings. Finally, you will learn how to troubleshoot issues that arise while performing digital forensic investigations.

By the end of the book, you will be able to carry out forensic investigations efficiently.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Digital Forensics and Evidence Acquisition, will give you a brief overview of digital forensics as a science, and will cover the basics of digital evidence acquisition, examination and reporting.

Chapter 2, Windows Memory Acquisition and Analysis, will guide you through Windows memory acquisition with Belkasoft RAM Capturer and DumpIt. After you will learn how to analyze memory images with Belkasoft Evidence Center and Volatility.

Chapter3, Windows Drive Acquisition, will guide you through the acquisition of the main source of Windows forensic artifacts hard and solid state drives. You will learn how to create forensic images with FTK Imager and DC3DD, and also how to mount them with Arsenal Image Mounter.

Chapter4, Windows File Systems Analysis, will guide you through the analysis of the most common Windows filesystem, New Technology File System or NTFS, with the Sleuth Kit. Also, you will learn how to recover deleted files from both NTFS and its descendant, ReFS, using Autopsy, ReclaiMe Pro, and PhotoRec.

Chapter5, Windows Shadow Copies Analysis, will show you how to browse and copy files from VSCs with ShadowCopyView. Also you will learn how to mount these copies with VSSADMIN and MKLINK, and analyze their data with Magnet AXIOM.

Chapter6, Windows Registry Analysis, will show you how to extract data from the Windows Registry with Magnet AXIOM and the RegRipper. Also, you will learn how to recover deleted Registry artifacts with the Registry Explorer.

Chapter 7, Main Windows Operating System Artifacts, will introduce you to the main Windows forensic artifacts, including the Recycle Bin items, Windows Event Logs, LNK files, and Prefetch files. You will learn how to analyze these artifacts with EnCase Forensic, Rifiuti2, Magnet AXIOM, FullEventLogView, EVTXtract, LECmd, Link Parser, PECmd, and Windows Prefetch Carver.

Chapter 8, Web Browser Forensics, will guide you through the analysis of the most popular Windows web browser with BlackBagBlackLight, Magnet Axiom, and Belkasoft Evidence Center. Also, you will learn how to extract browser data from a paging file.

Chapter 9, Email and Instant Messaging Forensics, will show you how to analyze artifacts of the most popular Windows email clients Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird, and the instant messaging application Skype. Also, you will learn how to extract webmail artifacts from a forensic image.

Chapter 10, Windows 10 Forensics, will introduce you to Windows 10—specific artifacts, such as Cortana, the Mail app, Xbox app, and notifications. You will learn where the data is stored, its format, and how to extract and analyze it.

Chapter 11, Data Visualization, will show you how to make your forensic reports even better with data visualization techniques. You will learn how to use these techniques in Forensic Toolkit (FTK), Autopsy, and Nuix.

Chapter 12, Troubleshooting in Windows Forensic Analysis, will teach you how to solve problems with your forensic software, both commercial and free/open source; show you what to do if processes fail, why its important to analyze false positives, give you recommendations on your first steps in digital forensics; and provide a nice list of sources for further reading.

What you need for this book

The following software is required for this book:

Arsenal Image Mounter
Autopsy
Belkasoft Evidence Center
Belkasoft RAM Capturer
BlackBagBlackLight
dc3dd
DumpIt
EnCase Forensic
EVTXtract
FTK
FTK Imager
FullEventLogView
Intella
LECmd
Link Parser
Magnet AXIOM
Nuix
PECmd
PhotoRec
ReclaiMe Pro
Registry Explorer
RegRipper
Rifiuti2
ShadowCopyView
SkypeLogView
The Sleuth Kit
Volatility
Windows Prefetch Carver

Most of the commercial tools from this list have trial versions available for downloading for free. Download links are provided in the chapters.

Who this book is for

If you are a forensic analyst and incident response professional who wants to solve computer forensics investigations for the Windows platform, then this books is for you.

Sections

In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it, How it works, There's more, and See also).

To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, we use these sections as follows:

Getting ready

This section tells you what to expect in the recipe, and describes how to set up any software or any preliminary settings required for the recipe.

How to do it…

This section contains the steps required to follow the recipe.

How it works…

This section usually consists of a detailed explanation of what happened in the previous section.

There's more…

This section consists of additional information about the recipe in order to make the reader more knowledgeable about the recipe.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, path names, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "So in our case, it's D:\Belkasoft Memory Forensics Test."

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

volatility_2.6_win64_standalone.exe -f X:stuxnet.vmem
--
profile=WinXPSP3x86 malfind -p 868 --dump-dir
X:Stuxnet

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "The first pane displays information about detected shadow copies, including name, Explorer path, Volume path, Created Time, and so on."

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.

Customer support

Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.

Downloading the color images of this book

We also provide you with a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/WindowsForensicsCookbook_ColorImages.pdf.

Errata

Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books-maybe a mistake in the text or the code-we would be grateful if you could report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website or added to any list of existing errata under the Errata section of that title.

To view the previously submitted errata, go to https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/support and enter the name of the book in the search field. The required information will appear under the Errata section.

Piracy

Piracy of copyrighted material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.

Please contact us at copyright@packtpub.com with a link to the suspected pirated material.

We appreciate your help in protecting our authors and our ability to bring you valuable content.

Questions

If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at questions@packtpub.com, and we will do our best to address the problem.

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Authors (2)

Scar de Courcier

Scar de Courcier is Senior Editor at digital forensics website Forensic Focus. She also works as an independent consultant on online and offline child protection projects. In her spare time, she enjoys swimming, pretending she lives on the USS Voyager, and hanging out with her cat.
Read more about Scar de Courcier

Oleg Skulkin

Oleg Skulkin is the Head of Digital Forensics and Malware Analysis Laboratory at Group-IB. Oleg has worked in the fields of digital forensics, incident response, and cyber threat intelligence and research for over a decade, fueling his passion for uncovering new techniques used by hidden adversaries. Oleg has authored and co-authored multiple blog posts, papers, and books on related topics and holds GCFA and GCTI certifications.
Read more about Oleg Skulkin

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