Practical Windows Forensics

Leverage the power of digital forensics for Windows systems

Key Features

• Build your own lab environment to analyze forensic data and practice techniques.
• This book offers meticulous coverage with an example-driven approach and helps you build the key skills of performing forensics on Windows-based systems using digital artifacts.
• It uses specific open source and Linux-based tools so you can become proficient at analyzing forensic data and upgrade your existing knowledge.

Book Description

Over the last few years, the wave of the cybercrime has risen rapidly. We have witnessed many major attacks on the governmental, military, financial, and media sectors. Tracking all these attacks and crimes requires a deep understanding of operating system operations, how to extract evident data from digital evidence, and the best usage of the digital forensic tools and techniques. Regardless of your level of experience in the field of information security in general, this book will fully introduce you to digital forensics. It will provide you with the knowledge needed to assemble different types of evidence effectively, and walk you through the various stages of the analysis process.
We start by discussing the principles of the digital forensics process and move on to show you the approaches that are used to conduct analysis. We will then study various tools to perform live analysis, and go through different techniques to analyze volatile and non-volatile data.

What you will learn

• Perform live analysis on victim or suspect Windows systems locally or remotely
• Understand the different natures and acquisition techniques of volatile and non-volatile data.
• Create a timeline of all the system actions to restore the history of an incident.
• Recover and analyze data from FAT and NTFS file systems.
• Make use of various tools to perform registry analysis.
• Track a system user's browser and e-mail activities to prove or refute some hypotheses.
• Get to know how to dump and analyze computer memory.

Who this book is for

This book targets forensic analysts and professionals who would like to develop skills in digital forensic analysis for the Windows platform. You will acquire proficiency, knowledge, and core skills to undertake forensic analysis of digital data.
Prior experience of information security and forensic analysis would be helpful. You will gain knowledge and an understanding of performing forensic analysis with tools especially built for the Windows platform.

Ayman (@aymanshaaban) works as security researcher for Kasperksy lab since May 2014. He worked in Egyptian national CERT as digital forensics engineer for 5 years. During his career Ayman participated in building digital forensics labs, provided analysis for cases with national and international scopes and delivered training courses on digital forensics analysis for different high profile entities. Ayman is a certified GSEC, GCIH, GCFA and CFCE. He also has a BSc in communication and electronics, information security diploma from ITI and working on his master degree in information security. Ayman on Linkedin at http://eg.linkedin.com/in/aymanshaaban I would like to thank my family and my friends for their continuous support. Also, I want to thank all my colleagues I am working or worked with in Kaspersky Lab, EG-CERT and Nile University for their support and dedication.

Konstantin Sapronov works as Deputy Head of Global Emergency Response Team Kaspersky Lab.Konstantin joined Kaspersky Lab in 2000. He has been in his current position since August 2011 as Deputy Head of Global Emergency Response Team. His previous position was group manager of Virus Lab China since 2007 and has been responsible for establishing and developing the Virus Lab at Kaspersky Lab's office in China. Prior to this he worked as a virus analyst and head of the Non-Intel Platform Group in the Virus Lab at Kaspersky Lab's HQ in Moscow, specializing in reverse engineering and the analysis of malware, exploits and vulnerabilities. Konstantin is the author of several analytical articles on malware for UNIX and other information security topics. Konstantin holds degrees of Moscow Power Engineering Institute (Technical University) and the Moscow State University of Economics, Statistics and Information Technology. First of all, many thanks to all my family - my parents, my wife and daughter, who have always supported me. Also I would like to thank all the people I work with all the years of our company for their support, professionalism and willingness to