INTRO to Cyber crime week 5

1.0 Overview/Case Summary

Example:

1. On today's date, John Doe contacted my office in regards to imaging a stolen laptop computer running Windows® XP Professional that had been recovered. Doe is requesting a forensic examination to see what company documents may have been stolen by the suspect(s) and is requesting a full forensic examination and report for possible criminal charges & civil litigation.

This section will vary in length. You will include any relevant information regarding what led to you as the forensic examiner/analyst becoming involved with the digital evidence. You may be just receiving the forensic image and someone else conducted the forensic acquisition and this is a good place to document that as this will correlate with your chain of custody information that you immediately started once you came into contact with the digital evidence. Remember, this is an overview and a summary of how the case was initialized and where you as the examiner/analyst became involved.

2.0 Forensic Acquisition & Exam Preparation

Example:

1. On today's date I began the forensic acquisition/imaging process of the stolen laptop. Prior to imaging the stolen laptop, I photographed the laptop, documenting any identifiers (e.g., make, model, serial #), unique markings, visible damage, etc. while maintaining chain of custody.

2. Using a sterile storage media (examination medium) that had been previously forensically wiped and verified by this examiner (MD5 hash value: ed6be165b631918f3cca01eccad378dd) using ABC tool version 1.0. The MD5 hash value for the examination medium yielded the same MD5 hash value as previous forensic wipes to sterilize this media.

3. At this point, I removed the hard drive from the stolen laptop and connected it to my hardware write-blocker, which is running the most recent firmware and has been verified by this examiner. After connecting the hardware write blocker to the suspect hard drive, I connected the hardware write blocker via USB 2.0 to my forensic examination machine to begin the forensic imaging process?

4. Etc, etc.

This section is very important, as you must detail your interaction with the digital evidence and the steps taken to preserve and forensically acquire the evidence. Any additional steps that you take (e.g. forensically wiping storage/examination media, etc.) should be notated in this section of your report. Remember, this section of your report is usually where you as the examiner/analyst came into contact with the digital evidence and thoroughly documenting what you have done is very important to the integrity of the digital evidence and your chain of custody.

Examiner's Tip: You should have a digital camera in your forensic toolkit. Take a picture of the evidence and document each step of the forensic acquisition and preparation process. Regardless, if you include the picture in your report or as an exhibit, this picture is a perfect field note for you as the examiner to reference when completing your report.

• You will also need to include that you verified your forensic image and notate the hash values (e.g., MD5, SHA-1).

• You will also need to briefly describe the process you used when making a working copy from the forensic image of the original evidence.

3.0 Findings and Report (Forensic Analysis)

Example:

1. After completing the forensic acquisition of the stolen laptop I began analyzing the forensic image of the stolen laptop with Forensic Tool

2. I used the following tools for forensic analysis, which are licensed to this examiner:

o Guidance® Software's EnCase® 6.17 o SANS Investigative Forensic Toolkit (SIFT) Version 2.0 o Internet Evidence Finder v3.3 o RegRipper by Harlan Carvey o Microsoft® Excel 2007

3. A review of the Internet history using Internet Evidence Finder, the following data was recovered from sector 117004, which shows a Facebook email between John Doe and Jane Doe. Further analysis shows that a John Doe logged into his Google Mail account. See screenshots below:

John Doe logging into Google Mail account.

John Doe logging into Google Mail account.

This is the most detailed section of your investigation. You will include all artifacts that you find during your analysis relating to the case.

Examiner's Tip: A very good practice when you are including your evidence into your report is to include hyperlinks within your report to link to pictures, documents, etc. Make sure you test and validate that the hyperlinks work properly so when your report is being reviewed, the reader can navigate easily to the evidence that you are including in your report.

4.0 Conclusion In this section, you are basing your conclusion off the forensic evidence. Remember, the goal of the forensic examination is to report the facts, regardless if the evidence is inculpatory or exculpatory in nature.

Ref: https://www.sans.org/blog/intro-to-report-writing-for-digital-forensics/