What is Cyber Forensics? Why is it important?

Data is exponentially growing every minute, and so are juvenile delinquents. Almost everything is digitized today. Just like cyber security experts, these crooks also keep exploring newer technologies and methods to breach as the technology evolves. To combat fraudsters, it is essential to have the upper hand in surfing technology.

Cyber forensics is a defense technology put forth to protect sensitive data, discover before the crime happens to find faults and catch hold of faulty that breached into the data. Learning Cyber Security would give you a better foot to understand the Cyber Forensics concept extensively.

Let us understand the novel breed of defense technology, cyber forensics.

What is Cyber Forensics?

By definition, cyber forensics is the act of gathering, analyzing, and presenting data that can be used as evidence in court using scientific techniques. This information could be used to prove the existence of a crime, identify the offender, or exonerate the guilty.

Cyber forensics collects, inspects, interprets, reports, and presents electronic evidence present either on hard drives or deleted files. The evidence can be presented as a complex document to prove legal issues before the law. Having a digital copy of an organization’s data is vital in a secured storage cell. You can learn more about Cyber Forensics by enrolling in a free Cyber Forensics Course and get started.

Why is Cyber Forensics important?

Cyber security is aimed at reducing the risk of reducing cyber attacks and protecting the system against unauthorized access to the systems, networks, and technologies. Cyber forensics, an inevitably important factor of the technological age, performs a detailed investigation to discover who is to blame for the breach. The replicated copy is used to carry out the inquiry to ensure the system’s safety. It is more focused on recovering and investigating the artifacts available on a digital device.

The demand for cyber forensics grows as the world expands to become digitized. By locating the underlying offenders, it helps us stop aggressive actions. The acquired evidence helps cyber security experts locate hackers and crackers. There is an escalation in demand for cyber forensic experts as cybercrimes do. They examine unauthorized activities through browsing history, email records and/or digital trace reviews.

Cyber Forensics Process

Cyber forensics employs a systematic approach to interpretation, providing clear solutions.

1. Obtaining an examined digital copy of the system: To prevent damage from being done to the actual system, which could result in file confusion with the files currently present on the computer, this method requires creating a replica of the system’s data. Cloning is replicating the files and directories on a hard disc. The duplicate is already available on another disc by replicating every bit of data for analysis.
2. Certifying the replica’s authenticity: Once the files have been duplicated, professionals check to make sure the copied data is accurate and consistent with the original data in the system.
3. Assessing the forensic suitability of the copied data: Data can be altered in the format while being copied from a device, which could lead to differences between the operating systems of the investigators and the device from which the data was copied. To prevent this, investigators make sure the data is written on the hard drive in a format appropriate for computer usage, the structure remains stable, and the data is forensically acceptable.
4. Recovering the erased files: Investigators must use cutting-edge technologies to recover and recreate erased files because criminals frequently think of creative ways to erase the scene and some evidence that would show their wrongdoing. The user can undelete files from a computer, but the files are not permanently removed from the machine, and forensics experts can recover them.
5. Using keywords to find the required information: Researchers apply specific high-speed techniques to obtain the necessary information by utilizing keywords in the example paper. However, old temporary files and documents that were deleted years ago will be kept there until new data is added. The OS interprets empty space in the hard disc as space for storing new files and directories. Forensic experts search for these files using this open space. Experts in forensics use tools that can search through all data for relevant information and produce it.
6. Putting the entire process together as a technical report: The next step will be to create a technical report that is applicable and simple to understand, regardless of the person’s educational background. The idea behind creating a report is to clearly identify the crime, potential offenders, and innocent people. No matter what their background, everyone should be able to understand the technical report. The main emphasis should be on the offender’s identity and the methods they employed to commit the crime.

Tools to Perform Cyber Forensics Process

1.Disk Analysis: Autopsy and The Sleuth Kit:

The most popular forensics toolkits in use today are probably Autopsy and the Sleuth Kit. A command-line tool called The Sleuth Kit conducts a forensic examination of hard drive and smartphone forensic photos. The Sleuth Kit is extensively used behind the scenes by Autopsy, a GUI-based program. Users can quickly insert new functionality into the products because of its modular and plugin architecture design. Although both programmes are open-source and free, they both offer paid support and training.

2. Memory Forensics: Volatility

There are other locations on a computer where forensic data and artefacts might be kept, despite the fact that tools like the Sleuth Kit concentrate on the hard drive. RAM is a volatile memory that can store significant forensic data, which must be properly and swiftly gathered to be forensically valid and helpful. The most well-known and extensively used tool for analyzing volatile memory is volatility. Volatility is free, open-source, and enables third-party plugins, just like The Sleuth Kit. In fact, the Volatility Foundation sponsors a competition every year for users to create the most creative and useful framework extension.

3. Mobile Forensics: Cellebrite UFED

The usage of mobile devices at work is increasingly common, and many companies either offer BYOD programs or provide their own smartphones to employees. These devices are also often the subject of cyberattacks like phishing, making them a likely source of important forensic data. A mobile-specific forensics tool can be an advantageous purchase given the growing significance of mobile forensics. The most fantastic commercial mobile forensics tool, according to several experts, is Cellebrite UFED. It offers unique techniques and tools for mobile device analysis and supports a variety of platforms (not only mobile devices).

4. Network Analysis: Wireshark

Although many forensics tools concentrate on the endpoint, there are other sources of important data that can be used in a forensics inquiry. The majority of cyberattacks take place via networks; therefore, analyzing network traffic captures can help identify malware and give access to data that may have already been lost or rewritten on the endpoint. Wireshark is the most well-known and often used tool for network traffic analysis. Wireshark is open-source, free, and provides dissectors for a variety of network traffic types. It also contains a user-friendly, intuitive GUI for traffic analysis and a wide range of functions. It may ingest network capture files for analysis or provide real-time traffic capture.

5. Linux Distributions: CAINE

Many of the technologies discussed here are free and open-source, as are many other digital forensics tools. They are simple to purchase. As a result, installation and configuration might be challenging. A variety of distinct Linux digital forensics distributions are accessible as virtual computers to streamline this procedure. These virtual machines already have a variety of tools installed and set up. One illustration of such a tool is the computer-aided Investigative Environment (CAINE). Numerous of the most popular computer forensics tools are included in this Linux edition, along with third-party plugins for programs like Autopsy.

Wrapping Up

The source of the infection can be successfully located and identified by the cyber forensics investigation. The detectives locate the memory’s address in the system that sends the malware by combining several procedures. Additionally, they uncover proof connecting the memory to the perpetrator of the attack.

If you are an enthusiast in the domain and already have no expertise in it, you can register for the best Cyber Security course and put yourself on the right foot to expand your knowledge and climb your career ladder!