HomeGuide To Digital Forensics
Guide To Digital Forensics

Guide To Digital Forensics

Computer forensics or digital forensics is a term in computer science to obtain legal proof present in digital media or computers storage. With digital forensic investigation, the investigator can find what occurred to the digital media resembling emails, hard disk, logs, computer system, and the network itself. In many case, forensic investigation can produce how the crime could happened and how we are able to defend ourselves in opposition to it next time.

Some reasons why we have to conduct a forensic investigation: 1. To gather evidences so that it can be used in court to solve legal cases. 2. To investigate our network energy, and to fill the safety gap with patches and fixes. 3. To recover deleted recordsdata or any files in the event of hardware or software program failure

In computer forensics, an important things that need to be remembered when conducting the investigation are:

1. The original proof must not be altered in anyhow, and to do conduct the process, forensic investigator should make a bit-stream image. Bit-stream image is a bit by bit copy of the original storage medium and exact copy of the original media. The difference between a bit-stream image and s8 regular copy of the unique storage is bit-stream image is the slack space in the storage. You'll not discover any slack house information on a duplicate media.

2. All forensic processes must comply with the authorized legal guidelines in corresponding nation the place the crimes happened. Each nation has completely different legislation suit in IT field. Some take IT rules very severely, for example: United Kingdom, Australia.

3. All forensic processes can only be performed after the investigator has the search warrant.

Forensic investigators would usually looking on the timeline of how the crimes occurred in timely manner. With that, we are able to produce the crime scene about how, when, what and why crimes may happened. In an enormous firm, it's recommended to create a Digital Forensic Group or First Responder Team, so that the corporate might still preserve the evidence till the forensic investigator come to the crime scene.

First Response rules are: 1. By no means should anyone, except for Forensic Analyst, to make any attempts to get well information from any computer system or machine that holds electronic information. 2. Any try to retrieve the data by person stated in number 1, should be averted because it may compromise the integrity of the evidence, during which grew to become inadmissible in authorized court.

Based mostly on that rules, it has already explained the necessary roles of having a First Responder Staff in a company. The unqualified individual can solely secure the perimeter so that nobody can touch the crime scene till Forensic Analyst has come (This may be done by taking photo of the crime scene. They can also make notes in regards to the scene and who had been current at that time.

Steps need to be taken when a digital crimes happenred in an expert method: 1. Safe the crime scene until the forensic analyst arrive.

2. Forensic Analyst should request for the search warrant from native authorities or firm's management.

3. Forensic Analyst make take a picture of the crime scene in case of if there is no such thing as a any images has been taken.

4. If the computer is still powered on, don't turned off the computer. As a substitute, used a forensic tools corresponding to Helix to get some information that can solely be found when the computer is still powered on, similar to knowledge on RAM, and registries. Such instruments has it is special perform as to not write something back to the system so the integrity keep intake.

5. As soon as all live proof is collected, Forensic Analyst cant turned off the computer and take harddisk back to forensic lab.

6. All of the evidences should be documented, wherein chain of custody is used. Chain of Custody maintain information on the evidence, resembling: who has the evidence for the last time.

7. Securing the evidence have to be accompanied by authorized officer resembling police as a formality.

8. Back within the lab, Forensic Analyst take the proof to create bit-stream image, as original proof must not be used. Normally, Forensic Analyst will create 2-5 bit-stream image in case 1 image is corrupted. Of course Chain of Custody nonetheless used on this state of affairs to keep records of the evidence.

9. Hash of the unique evidence and bit-stream image is created. This acts as a proof that unique evidence and the bit-stream image is the exact copy. So any alteration on the bit image will result in completely different hash, which makes the evidences found grow to be inadmissible in court.

10. Forensic Analyst begins to find evidence within the bit-stream image by rigorously wanting at the corresponding location relies on what sort of crime has happened. For example: Non permanent Internet Information, Slack Space, Deleted File, Steganography files.