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Python Digital Forensics Cookbook
Python Digital Forensics Cookbook

Python Digital Forensics Cookbook: Effective Python recipes for digital investigations

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Python Digital Forensics Cookbook

Creating Artifact Report Recipes

In this chapter, we will cover the following recipes:

  • Using HTML templates
  • Creating a paper trail
  • Working with CSVs
  • Visualizing events with Excel
  • Auditing your work

Introduction

Probably within the first few hours of starting your career in cyber security, you were already hunched over a screen, feverishly scanning a spreadsheet for clues. This sounds familiar because it is true and part of the daily process for most investigations. Spreadsheets are the bread and butter of cyber security. Within them are details of various processes and specific information extracted from valuable artifacts. In this cookbook, we will frequently output parsed artifact data into a spreadsheet due to its portability and ease of use. However, considering that at one time or another every cyber security professional has created a technical report for a nontechnical audience, a spreadsheet may not be the best option.

Why create reports at all? I think I've heard that muttered by stressed examiners before. Today, everything is built on information interchange...

Using HTML templates

Recipe Difficulty: Easy

Python Version: 2.7 or 3.5

Operating System: Any

HTML can be an effective medium for a report. There are a great number of snazzy templates out there that can make even technical reports look appealing. That's the first step towards hooking the audience. Or, at the very least, a preventative measure to forestall the audience from instantly nodding off. This recipe uses one such template and some test data to create a visually compelling example of acquisition details. We really have our work cut out for us here.

Getting started

This recipe introduces HTML templating with the jinja2 module. The jinja2 library is a very powerful tool and has a number of different documented features...

Creating a paper trail

Recipe Difficulty: Medium

Python Version: 2.7 or 3.5

Operating System: Any

Most imaging utilities create audit logs recording the details of the acquisition media and other available metadata. Admit it; unless something goes horribly wrong, these logs are mostly untouched if the evidence verifies. Let's change that and leverage the newly created HTML dashboard from the previous recipe and make better use of this acquisition data.

Getting started

All libraries used in this script are present in Python's standard library or functions imported from the prior script.

How to do it...

...

Working with CSVs

Recipe Difficulty: Easy

Python Version: 2.7 or 3.5

Operating System: Any

Everyone has reviewed data in a CSV spreadsheet at some point. They are pervasive and a common output format for most applications. Writing CSVs with Python is one of the easiest methods to create a report of processed data. In this recipe, we will demonstrate how you can use the csv and unicodecsv libraries to create quick reports with Python.

Getting started

Part of this recipe uses the unicodecsv module. This module replaces the built-in Python 2 csv module and adds Unicode support. Python 3's csv module does not have this limitation and can be used without the support of any additional library. All other libraries used in this...

Visualizing events with Excel

Recipe Difficulty: Easy

Python Version: 2.7 or 3.5

Operating System: Any

Let's take it one step further from the previous recipe with Excel. Excel is a very robust spreadsheet application and we can do a lot with it. We will use Excel to create a table and plot graphs of the data.

Getting started

There are a number of different Python libraries with varying support for Excel and its many features. In this recipe, we use the xlsxwriter module to create a table and graph of the data. This module can be used for much more than that. This module can be installed by pip using the following command:

pip install xlsxwriter==0.9.9
To learn more about the xlsxwriter library, visit https://xlsxwriter...

Auditing your work

Recipe Difficulty: Easy

Python Version: 2.7 or 3.5

Operating System: Any

Keeping detailed investigative notes is a key to any investigation. Without this, it can be difficult to put all of the pieces together or accurately recall findings. Sometimes, it can be helpful to have a screenshot or a series of them to remind you of the various steps you took during your review.

Getting started

In order to create a recipe with cross-platform support, we have elected to use the pyscreenshot module. This module relies on a few dependencies, specifically the Python Imaging Library (PIL), and one or more backends. The backend used here is the WX GUI library. All three of these modules can be installed with pip:

pip...
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Key benefits

  • ? Develop code that extracts vital information from everyday forensic acquisitions.
  • ? Increase the quality and efficiency of your forensic analysis.
  • ? Leverage the latest resources and capabilities available to the forensic community.

Description

Technology plays an increasingly large role in our daily lives and shows no sign of stopping. Now, more than ever, it is paramount that an investigator develops programming expertise to deal with increasingly large datasets. By leveraging the Python recipes explored throughout this book, we make the complex simple, quickly extracting relevant information from large datasets. You will explore, develop, and deploy Python code and libraries to provide meaningful results that can be immediately applied to your investigations. Throughout the Python Digital Forensics Cookbook, recipes include topics such as working with forensic evidence containers, parsing mobile and desktop operating system artifacts, extracting embedded metadata from documents and executables, and identifying indicators of compromise. You will also learn to integrate scripts with Application Program Interfaces (APIs) such as VirusTotal and PassiveTotal, and tools such as Axiom, Cellebrite, and EnCase. By the end of the book, you will have a sound understanding of Python and how you can use it to process artifacts in your investigations.

Who is this book for?

If you are a digital forensics examiner, cyber security specialist, or analyst at heart, understand the basics of Python, and want to take it to the next level, this is the book for you. Along the way, you will be introduced to a number of libraries suitable for parsing forensic artifacts. Readers will be able to use and build upon the scripts we develop to elevate their analysis.

What you will learn

  • ? Understand how Python can enhance digital forensics and investigations
  • ? Learn to access the contents of, and process, forensic evidence containers
  • ? Explore malware through automated static analysis
  • ? Extract and review message contents from a variety of email formats
  • ? Add depth and context to discovered IP addresses and domains through various Application Program Interfaces (APIs)
  • ? Delve into mobile forensics and recover deleted messages from SQLite databases
  • ? Index large logs into a platform to better query and visualize datasets
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Length: 412 pages
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Language : English
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Table of Contents

10 Chapters
Essential Scripting and File Information Recipes Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Creating Artifact Report Recipes Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
A Deep Dive into Mobile Forensic Recipes Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Extracting Embedded Metadata Recipes Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Networking and Indicators of Compromise Recipes Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Reading Emails and Taking Names Recipes Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Log-Based Artifact Recipes Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Working with Forensic Evidence Container Recipes Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Exploring Windows Forensic Artifacts Recipes - Part I Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Exploring Windows Forensic Artifacts Recipes - Part II Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
(2 Ratings)
5 star 100%
4 star 0%
3 star 0%
2 star 0%
1 star 0%
Jose Julio Santana Oct 24, 2018
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Un libro muy didáctico
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Laanders Oct 29, 2018
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
I just bought this book.I am not a developer, I need to use python scripts for computer forensics analysis.I need to extract data from the Windows.edb file. In this book there is a chapter that helped me to extract this data and to create an export in csv format.The other chapters of this book will help me to create python scripts. Thé explanations are clear, well detailled.What I like about this book is that the authors offers us other possibilities to improve python scripts
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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