hacktricks/forensics/basic-forensic-methodology

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Basic Forensic Methodology

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In this section of the book we are going to learn about some useful forensics tricks.
We are going to talk about partitions, file-systems, carving, memory, logs, backups, OSs, and much more.

So if you are doing a professional forensic analysis to some data or just playing a CTF you can find here useful interesting tricks.

Creating and Mounting an Image

{% content-ref url="image-adquisition-and-mount.md" %} image-adquisition-and-mount.md {% endcontent-ref %}

Malware Analysis

This isn't necessary the first step to perform once you have the image. But you can use this malware analysis techniques independently if you have a file, a file-system image, memory image, pcap... so it's good to keep these actions in mind:

{% content-ref url="malware-analysis.md" %} malware-analysis.md {% endcontent-ref %}

Inspecting an Image

if you are given a forensic image of a device you can start analyzing the partitions, file-system used and recovering potentially interesting files (even deleted ones). Learn how in:

{% content-ref url="partitions-file-systems-carving/" %} partitions-file-systems-carving {% endcontent-ref %}

Depending on the used OSs and even platform different interesting artifacts should be searched:

{% content-ref url="windows-forensics/" %} windows-forensics {% endcontent-ref %}

{% content-ref url="linux-forensics.md" %} linux-forensics.md {% endcontent-ref %}

{% content-ref url="docker-forensics.md" %} docker-forensics.md {% endcontent-ref %}

Deep inspection of specific file-types and Software

If you have very suspicious file, then depending on the file-type and software that created it several tricks may be useful.
Read the following page to learn some interesting tricks:

{% content-ref url="specific-software-file-type-tricks/" %} specific-software-file-type-tricks {% endcontent-ref %}

I want to do a special mention to the page:

{% content-ref url="specific-software-file-type-tricks/browser-artifacts.md" %} browser-artifacts.md {% endcontent-ref %}

Memory Dump Inspection

{% content-ref url="memory-dump-analysis/" %} memory-dump-analysis {% endcontent-ref %}

Pcap Inspection

{% content-ref url="pcap-inspection/" %} pcap-inspection {% endcontent-ref %}

Anti-Forensic Techniques

Keep in mind the possible use of anti-forensic techniques:

{% content-ref url="anti-forensic-techniques.md" %} anti-forensic-techniques.md {% endcontent-ref %}

Threat Hunting

{% content-ref url="file-integrity-monitoring.md" %} file-integrity-monitoring.md {% endcontent-ref %}

Support HackTricks and get benefits!

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Get the official PEASS & HackTricks swag

Join the 💬 Discord group or the telegram group or follow me on Twitter 🐦@carlospolopm.

Share your hacking tricks submitting PRs to the hacktricks github repo.