Summary

In this chapter, we learned about file recovery and data extraction using popular open source tools in Kali Linux. We first performed file carving using the very impressive foremost, which searched an entire image for supported file types within the file's headers and footers. We then did the same using recoverjpg and the newer Scalpel, but had to make a slight modification 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 great for investigations requiring file recovery and carving, together with either foremost or Scalpel, or even both.

Now that we've covered file carving and recovery, let...