Summary

In this chapter, we learned about file recovery and data carving using popular open source tools in Kali Linux. We first performed file carving using the very impressive Foremost, which carved the entire downloaded forensic image for supported file types within the file header and footers. We then did the same using Magicrescue and Scalpel, but we had to make slight modifications by selecting the file types we wished to carve. Both Foremost and Scalpel presented us with an audit.txt file, summarizing the carve list and its details along with subfolders containing the actual evidence.

bulk_extractor is a wonderful tool that carves data and also finds useful information, such as email addresses, visited URLs, Facebook URLs, credit card numbers, and a variety of other information. bulk_extractor is also great for investigations requiring file recovery and carving, together with either Foremost or Scalpel, or even both.

Lastly, we looked at file recovery using scrounge_NTFS...