Digital Forensics
Digital forensics is the process of collecting, preserving, analyzing, and presenting electronic evidence from computers, networks, and devices. It follows chain-of-custody procedures to produce findings that are reproducible and defensible in legal or organizational proceedings.
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Don't Panic
Don't Panic - Digital Forensics
Digital forensics is the disciplined use of methods to find, preserve, examine, analyze, and report information from digital systems. The goal is to answer an authorized question while protecting the integrity and meaning of the evidence. The same techniques support incident response, internal investigations, regulatory matters, civil disputes, and careful technology troubleshooting. The goal is not to collect everything or to produce an impressive tool report.
A device is a possible evidence source. The evidence is the information that matters to your question. Artifacts such as files, metadata, logs, browser records, and cloud audit events rarely tell a complete story alone. A timestamp might mean creation, modification, access, synchronization, or a tool action. Identify what produced an artifact before you interpret it, and corroborate across independent sources when you reconstruct a sequence.
NIST SP 800-86 describes collection, examination, analysis, and reporting. Those stages guide judgment; they do not remove it. Establish authority and a concrete scope before you touch a source. Preserve before you interpret, because ordinary use and live tooling change state. Volatile data can vanish when power is removed. Record methods, hashes, custody, limitations, and why scope changed when new findings appear.
Keep findings separate from speculation. Report what the data supports, what you could not determine, and how another qualified person can evaluate the path you took.
Read the Intro for the process model and evidence vocabulary. Use the Cheatsheet when you need acquisition and reporting checkpoints. Landscape places forensic work among related security practices; Updates tracks NIST SP 800-86, the primary guide behind this course's stage model.
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Sources
- https://www.nist.gov/publications/guide-integrating-forensic-techniques-incident-response
Supports
- Digital forensics in incident response and technology troubleshooting
- Collection, examination, analysis, and reporting as the broad forensic process
- Files, operating systems, network traffic, and applications as evidence sources
- Correlation across multiple data sources
- Process, timeline, attribution, incident-response, and report claims across learner artifacts
- Quiz answers about process order, timestamp interpretation, attribution, containment, and missing records
- The first study-path rationale in 06-links.yaml
- https://www.swgde.org/documents/published-complete-listing/18-f-002-best-practices-for-digital-evidence-collection/
Supports
- Preparation, legal-authority review, integrity, security, and documentation during collection
- Recognition of powered state and volatile evidence
- Live collection as a process that can alter and create evidence
- Hashing, verification, working copies, archives, and contemporaneous notes
- Collection, live-system, integrity, custody, and limitation claims across learner artifacts
- Quiz answers about hashing and live acquisition
- The collection-guide rationale in 06-links.yaml
- https://www.swgde.org/documents/published-complete-listing/17-f-002-best-practices-for-computer-forensic-acquisitions/
Supports
- Investigation needs, scope, and authority driving acquisition
- Volatility, ancillary data, acquisition impact, repeatability, and tool validation
- Forensic images, verification, working copies, chain of custody, and preservation
- Acquisition and custody claims across learner artifacts
- Quiz answers about scope, working copies, live acquisition, and transfers
- The acquisition-guide rationale in 06-links.yaml
- https://www.swgde.org/documents/published-complete-listing/18-f-001-swgde-best-practices-for-computer-forensic-examination/
Supports
- Authority and examination-request review
- Isolated known environments, write protection, tool testing, and contemporaneous notes
- Systematic examination of relevant artifacts
- Analysis as interpretation and reporting of sound, defensible findings
- Examination-versus-analysis and tool-limit claims across learner artifacts
- Quiz answers about scope, working copies, timestamp semantics, and absence of records
- The examination-guide rationale in 06-links.yaml
- https://www.swgde.org/documents/published-complete-listing/18-q-002-swgde-requirements-for-report-writing-in-digital-and-multimedia-forensics/
Supports
- Minimum examination-report purpose and elements
- Request, authority, process, supporting data, results, conclusions, disposition, and authorization
- Tool output as supporting material rather than the full examination report
- Reporting claims across learner artifacts
- Quiz answer about tool-generated reports
- The report-writing rationale in 06-links.yaml
- https://www.nist.gov/itl/csd/secure-systems-and-applications/computer-forensics-tool-testing-program-cftt
Supports
- Methodology, specifications, procedures, criteria, test sets, and hardware for forensic tool testing
- Tool capability and limitation evaluation
- Tool-validation claims and conflicting-tool quiz answer
- The NIST tool-testing rationale in 06-links.yaml
- https://www.swgde.org/documents/published-complete-listing/18-q-001-minimum-requirements-for-testing-tools-used-in-digital-and-multimedia-forensics/
Supports
- Baseline testing of core forensic tools before casework
- Testing methods, frequency, report sources, and documentation
- Tool-validation checklist and conflicting-tool quiz answer
- The organizational tool-testing rationale in 06-links.yaml
- https://csrc.nist.gov/glossary/term/chain_of_custody
Supports
- Chain of custody as tracking evidence through collection, safeguarding, analysis, and transfers
- Custody definition and transfer-record quiz answer
- https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/201/final
Supports
- Cloud forensic readiness, cloud forensic challenges, and mitigation strategies
- Cloud evidence limits in learner artifacts
- The cloud-forensics rationale in 06-links.yaml