Digital forensics is a branch of forensic science that focuses on recovering and investigating material found in digital devices related to cybercrime. Digital forensics software focuses on uncovering, interpreting, and preserving electronic data evidence while investigating security incidents.
What Types of Digital Forensics Software Exist?
Digital forensics software is part of digital forensic science. As electronic devices are taking a substantial space in modern lifestyles, knowingly or unknowingly, criminals or offenders use them in their malicious acts. This makes these devices solid pieces of evidence to support or refute an accused in criminal and civil courts. Various types of digital forensics software help investigate networks and devices.
Network forensics software
Network forensics software is related to monitoring and analyzing computer network traffic to collect important information and legal evidence. This software examines traffic across a network suspected of being involved in malicious activities, like spreading malware or stealing credentials.
Wireless forensics software
Wireless forensics software is a division of network forensics software. This software offers the tools needed to collect and analyze data from wireless network traffic that can be presented as valid digital evidence in a court of law.
Database forensics software
Database forensics software examines databases and their related metadata. Database forensics software applies investigative techniques such as analytic analysis to database contents and its metadata to find digital evidence.
Malware forensics software
Malware forensics software deals with identifying malicious code to study payload, viruses, worms, etc. Malware forensics software analyzes and investigates possible malware culprits and the source of the attack. It checks for malicious code and finds its entry, propagation method, and impact on the system.
Email forensics software
Email forensics software deals with the recovery and analysis of emails, including deleted emails, calendars, and contacts. Email forensics software also analyzes emails for content to determine the source, date, time, the actual sender, and recipients to find digital evidence.
Memory forensics software
Memory forensics software collects data from system memory (system registers, cache, RAM) in raw form and then carves the data from the raw dump. Memory forensics software's primary application is the investigation of advanced computer attacks, which are stealthy enough to avoid leaving data on the computer's hard drive. In turn, the memory (RAM) must be analyzed for forensic information.
Mobile phone forensics software
Mobile phone forensic software examines and analyzes mobile devices. It retrieves phone and SIM contacts, call logs, incoming, and outgoing SMS/MMS, audio, videos, etc., from mobile phones. Most applications store their data in database files on a mobile phone.
Disk and data capture forensics software
Disk and data capture forensic software focuses on the core part of a computer system and extracts potential forensic artifacts such as files, emails, etc. Many times disk and data capture forensics software is used when a home or office environment is being investigated.
File analysis software
File analysis forensic software deals with files on media, deleted files, files in folders, or files in other files stored on or in some container. The goal of file analysis software is to identify, extract, and analyze these files and the file systems they lie upon to find data that might be valid evidence in a crime.
Registry analysis software
Registry analysis forensics software automatically extracts crucial information from the live registry or the raw registry files found in digital evidence and displays it in user-understandable format. It performs time conversion and translation of binary and other non-ASCII data.
