1.
Digital Forensics Framework
Digital Forensics Framework is another popular platform dedicated to digital forensics. The tool is
open source and comes under GPL License. It can be used either by professionals or non-
experts without any trouble. It can be used for digital chain of custody, to access the remote or
local devices, forensics of Windows or Linux OS, recovery hidden of deleted files, quick search
for files’ meta data, and various other things.
Download: [Link]
2. Open Computer Forensics Architecture
Open Computer Forensics Architecture (OCFA) is another popular distributed open-source
computer forensics framework. This framework was built on Linux platform and uses postgreSQL
database for storing data.
It was built by the Dutch National Police Agency for automating digital forensics process. It is
available to download under GPL license.
Download: [Link]
3. CAINE
CAINE (Computer Aided Investigative Environment) is the Linux distro created for digital
forensics. It offers an environment to integrate existing software tools as software modules in a
user friendly manner. This tool is open source.
Read More about it: [Link]
4. X-Ways Forensics
X-Ways Forensics is an advanced platform for digital forensics examiners. It runs on all available
version of Windows. It claims to not be very resource hungry and to work efficiently. If we talk
about the features, find the key features in the list below:
Disk imaging and cloning
Ability to read file system structures inside various image files
It supports most of the file systems including FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT, TFAT, NTFS,
Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, Next3®, CDFS/ISO9660/Joliet, UDF
Automatic detection of deleted or lost hard disk partition
Various data recovery techniques and powerful file carving
Bulk hash calculation
Viewing and editing binary data structures using templates
Easy detection of and access NTFS ADS
Well maintained file header
Automated activity logging
Data authenticity
Complete case management
Memory and RAM analysis
Gallery view for pictures
Internal viewer for Windows registry file
Automated registry report
Extracts metadata from various file types
Ability to extract emails from various available email clients.
And many more..
You can read the full list here: [Link]
5. SANS Investigative Forensics Toolkit – SIFT
SANS Investigative Forensics Toolkit or SIFT is a multi-purpose forensic operating system which
comes with all the necessary tools used in the digital forensic process. It is built on Ubuntu with
many tools related to digital forensics. Earlier this year, SIFT 3.0 was released. It comes for free
or charge and contains free open-source forensic tools.
In a previous post at [Link], we already covered SIFT in detail. You can
read those posts about SIFT to know more about this digital forensics platform.
Download: [Link]
6. EnCase
EnCase is another popular multi-purpose forensic platform with many nice tools for several areas
of the digital forensic process. This tool can rapidly gather data from various devices and unearth
potential evidence. It also produces a report based on the evidence.
This tool does not come for free (see site for current pricing).
Read more about EnCase: [Link]
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7. Registry Recon
Registry Recon is a popular registry analysis tool. It extracts the registry information from the
evidence and then rebuilds the registry representation. It can rebuild registries from both current
and previous Windows installations.
It is not a free tool. It costs $399.
Read more about it: [Link]
8. The Sleuth Kit
The Sleuth Kit is a Unix and Windows based tool which helps in forensic analysis of computers. It
comes with various tools which helps in digital forensics. These tools help in analyzing disk
images, performing in-depth analysis of file systems, and various other things.
Read more about it here: [Link]
9. Llibforensics
Libforensics is a library for developing digital forensics applications. It was developed in Python
and comes with various demo tools to extract information from various types of evidence.
Read more here: [Link]
10. Volatility
Volatility is the memory forensics framework. It used for incident response and malware analysis.
With this tool, you can extract information from running processes, network sockets, network
connection, DLLs and registry hives. It also has support for extracting information from Windows
crash dump files and hibernation files. This tool is available for free under GPL license.
Read more about the tool: [Link]
11. WindowsSCOPE
WindowsSCOPE is another memory forensics and reverse engineering tool used for analyzing
volatile memory. It is basically used for reverse engineering of malwares. It provides the
capability of analyzing the Windows kernel, drivers, DLLs, virtual and physical memory.
Read
more: [Link]
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12. The Coroner’s Toolkit
The Coroner’s Toolkit or TCT is also a good digital forensic analysis tool. It runs under several
Unix-related operating systems. It can be used to aid analysis of computer disasters and data
recovery.
Read more: [Link]
13. Oxygen Forensic Suite
Oxygen Forensic Suite is a nice software to gather evidence from a mobile phone to support your
case. This tool helps in gathering device information (including manufacturer, OS, IMEI number,
serial number), contacts, messages (emails, SMS, MMS), recover deleted messages, call logs
and calendar information. It also lets you access and analyze mobile device data and
documents. It generates easy to understand reports for better understanding.
More information here: [Link]
14. Bulk Extractor
Bulk Extractor is also an important and popular digital forensics tool. It scans the disk images, file
or directory of files to extract useful information. In this process, it ignores the file system
structure, so it is faster than other available similar kinds of tools. It is basically used by
intelligence and law enforcement agencies in solving cyber crimes.
Download it here: [Link]
15. Xplico
Xplico is an open source network forensic analysis tool. It is basically used to extract useful data
from applications which use Internet and network protocols. It supports most of the popular
protocols including HTTP, IMAP, POP, SMTP, SIP, TCP, UDP, TCP and others. Output data of
the tool is stored in SQLite database of MySQL database. It also supports IPv4 and IPv6 both.
Read more about this tool here: [Link]
16. Mandiant RedLine
Mandiant RedLine is a popular tool for memory and file analysis. It collects information about
running processes on a host, drivers from memory and gathers other data like meta data, registry
data, tasks, services, network information and Internet history to build a proper report.
Read more here: [Link]
17. Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE)
Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor or COFEE is a tool kit developed for computer
forensic experts. This tool was developed by Microsoft to gather evidence from Windows
systems. It can be installed on a USB pen drive or external hard disk. Just plug in the USB
device in the target computer and it starts a live analysis. It comes with 150 different tools with a
GUI based interface to command the tools. It is fast and can perform the whole analysis in as few
as 20 minutes. To law enforcement agencies, Microsoft provides free technical support for the
tool.
Official website: [Link]
18. P2 eXplorer
P2 eXplorer is a forensic image mounting tool which aims to help investigating officers with
examination of a case. With this image, you can mount forensic images as a read-only local and
physical disc and then explore the contents of the image with file explorer. You can easily view
deleted data and unallocated space of the image.
It can mount several images at a time. It supports most of the image formats including EnCasem,
safeBack, PFR, FTK DD, WinImage, Raw images from Linux DD, and VMWare images. It
supports both logical and physical image types.
This tool comes for $199, but you can grab the limited feature version of the tool for free.
Read more here: [Link]
19. PlainSight
PlainSight is another useful digital forensics tool. It is a CD based Knoppix which is a Linux
distribution. Some of its uses include viewing Internet histories, data carving, checking USB
device usage, memory dumps extracting password hashes, information gathering, examining
Windows firewall configuration, seeing recent documents, and other useful tasks. For using this
too, you only need to boot from the CD and the follow the instructions.
This tool is available for free.
Read more here: [Link]
20. XRY
XRY is the mobile forensics tool developed by Micro Systemation. It is used to analyze and
recover crucial information from mobile devices. This tool comes with a hardware device and
software. Hardware connects mobile phones to PC and software performs the analysis of the
device and extract data. It is designed to recover data for forensic analysis.
The latest version of the tool can recover data from all kind of smartphones including Android,
iPhone and BlackBerry. It gathers deleted data like call records, images, SMS and text
messages.
Read more about it: [Link]
21. HELIX3
HELIX3 is a live CD-based digital forensic suite created to be used in incident response. It comes
with many open source digital forensics tools including hex editors, data carving and password
cracking tools. If you want the free version, you can go for Helix3 2009R1. After this release, this
project was overtaken by a commercial vendor. So, you need to pay for most recent version of
the tool.
This tool can collect data from physical memory, network connections, user accounts, executing
processes and services, scheduled jobs, Windows Fegistry, chat logs, screen captures, SAM
files, applications, drivers, environment variables and Internet history. Then it analyzes and
reviews the data to generate the complied results based on reports.
Helix3 2008R1 can be downloaded here: [Link]
The enterprise version is available here: [Link]
22. Cellebrite UFED
Cellebrite’s UFED solutions present a unified workflow to allow examiners, investigators and first
responders to collect, protect and act decisively on mobile data with the speed and accuracy a
situation demands – without ever compromising one for the other. The UFED Pro Series is
designed for forensic examiners and investigators who require the most comprehensive, up-to-
date mobile data extraction and decoding support available to handle the influx of new data
sources. Platform agnostic, the UFED Field Series is designed to unify workflows between the
field and lab, making it possible to view, access and share mobile data via in-car workstations,
laptops, tablets or a secure, self-service kiosk located at a station.
More information here: [Link]
