The recipe for each is a little bit different.
New tools are developed every day, both as elite government-sponsored solutions and basement hacker rigs. Many tools fulfill more than one function simultaneously, and a significant trend in digital forensics tools are “wrappers”-one that packages hundreds of specific technologies with different functionalities into one overarching toolkit. Eventually, freeware and proprietary specialist technologies began to crop up as both hardware and software to carefully sift, extract, or observe data on a device without damaging or modifying it.ĭigital forensics tools can fall into many different categories, some of which include database forensics, disk and data capture, email analysis, file analysis, file viewers, internet analysis, mobile device analysis, network forensics, and registry analysis. As devices became more complex and packed with more information, live analysis became cumbersome and inefficient. Up until the early 1990s, most digital investigations were conducted through live analysis, which meant examining digital media by using the device-in-question as anyone else would. Investigators are increasingly relying upon new digital forensics tools to assist them.ĭigital forensics tools are all relatively new.
That said, retrieving that data in a secure, efficient, and lawful manner is not always a simple endeavor. Whether such a device belongs to a suspect or victim, the vast swathes of data these systems contain could be all an investigator needs to put together a case. Today’s smoking gun is more likely to be a laptop or a phone than it is a more literal weapon. Digital devices are ubiquitous and their use in chain-of-evidence investigations is crucial.