Book Review
I recently had an opportunity to read through Handbook of Digital Forensics and Investigation (ISBN-10: 0123742676), edited by Eoghan Casey.
One of the first things you notice about the book...aside from the heft and sense that you actually have something in your hands...is the fact that the book actually has 16 authors listed! 16! Many of the names listed are very prominent in the field of digital forensics, so one can only imagine the chore of not only keeping everyone on schedule, but getting the book into an overall flow.
Something I really like about the Handbook is that it starts off with basic, core principles. Digital forensics is one of those areas where folks usually want to dive right into the cool stuff (imaging systems, finding "evidence", running tools, etc.), but as with other similar areas, you're only going to get so far that way. These core principles are presented in an easy-to-understand manner, with little sidebars that illustrate or reinforce various points. Many of these principles are topics that are misunderstood, or talked about but not practiced in the wider community, and having luminaries such as Eoghan and Curtis and others present them in this sort of format brings them home again.
Some of those sidebars I mentioned, in my copy of the Handbook, are heavily highlighted, and the book itself has a number of notes in the margins of several chapters. One of the highlighted gems is in a "Practitioner's Tip" sidebar on page 23, where it says, "...apply the scientific method, seek peer review...". This one struck home, because too often in the community we see where statements are made that are assumptions, not based on supporting fact. IMHO, I think that is is a result of not seeking peer review, not engaging with others, and not having someone who's able to ask the simple question, "why?"
Another aspect of the Handbook that I found very useful was that when a technique or something specific about some data was discussed, several times, there were illustrations using not just commercial forensic analysis applications, but also free and open-source tools. For example, page 55 has an illustration of the use of the SQLite command line utility to examine the contents of the Skype main.db database file. My sense is that the overall approach to the Handbook is to move practitioners away from over reliance on a specific commercial application, and toward an understanding that hey, there are other riches to be discovered if you disconnect the dongle and think for a minute.
I'll admit that I didn't spend as much time on some chapters as I did on others. Chapters 1 and 2 were very interesting for me, but chapter 3 got into electronic discovery. While this really isn't something I do a lot of, parts of the chapter (prioritizing systems, processing data from tapes, etc.) caught my eye. The pace picked back up again with chapter 4, Intrusion Investigation, particularly where there was discussion of "fact versus speculation" and "Reporting Audiences". In my experience, these are just two of the areas where any investigation can easily veer off course. Of course, without question, I spent a great deal of time in chapter 5, Windows Forensic Analysis! However, that doesn't mean that the other chapters don't have a great deal of valuable information.
The real value of the Handbook is that it did not focus on any one platform, or on any one commercial product. Analysis of Windows, as well as *nix/Linux, Mac, and embedded systems are addressed, as was the network (including mobile networks). There was no singular focus on one commercial product, something you see in other books; instead, a combination of commercial, free, and open-source tools were used to illustrate various points. In one instance, three commercial applications were shown side-by-side to illustrate a point about deleted files. Even some of my own tools (RegRipper, wmd.pl, etc.) were mentioned!
Overall, I think that the book is an excellent handbook, and it definitely has a prominent place on my bookshelf. No one of us knows everything there is to know, and I even found little gems in the chapter on Windows forensic analysis. For anyone who doesn't spend much time in that area, or analyzing Macs, those chapters will be a veritable goldmine...and you're very likely to find something new, even if you are very experienced in those areas. The Handbook is going to be something that I refer back to time and again, for a long time to come. Thanks to Eoghan, and thanks to all of the authors who put in the time and effort to produce this excellent work.
Resources
Richard Bejtlich's review @TaoSecurity
One of the first things you notice about the book...aside from the heft and sense that you actually have something in your hands...is the fact that the book actually has 16 authors listed! 16! Many of the names listed are very prominent in the field of digital forensics, so one can only imagine the chore of not only keeping everyone on schedule, but getting the book into an overall flow.
Something I really like about the Handbook is that it starts off with basic, core principles. Digital forensics is one of those areas where folks usually want to dive right into the cool stuff (imaging systems, finding "evidence", running tools, etc.), but as with other similar areas, you're only going to get so far that way. These core principles are presented in an easy-to-understand manner, with little sidebars that illustrate or reinforce various points. Many of these principles are topics that are misunderstood, or talked about but not practiced in the wider community, and having luminaries such as Eoghan and Curtis and others present them in this sort of format brings them home again.
Some of those sidebars I mentioned, in my copy of the Handbook, are heavily highlighted, and the book itself has a number of notes in the margins of several chapters. One of the highlighted gems is in a "Practitioner's Tip" sidebar on page 23, where it says, "...apply the scientific method, seek peer review...". This one struck home, because too often in the community we see where statements are made that are assumptions, not based on supporting fact. IMHO, I think that is is a result of not seeking peer review, not engaging with others, and not having someone who's able to ask the simple question, "why?"
Another aspect of the Handbook that I found very useful was that when a technique or something specific about some data was discussed, several times, there were illustrations using not just commercial forensic analysis applications, but also free and open-source tools. For example, page 55 has an illustration of the use of the SQLite command line utility to examine the contents of the Skype main.db database file. My sense is that the overall approach to the Handbook is to move practitioners away from over reliance on a specific commercial application, and toward an understanding that hey, there are other riches to be discovered if you disconnect the dongle and think for a minute.
I'll admit that I didn't spend as much time on some chapters as I did on others. Chapters 1 and 2 were very interesting for me, but chapter 3 got into electronic discovery. While this really isn't something I do a lot of, parts of the chapter (prioritizing systems, processing data from tapes, etc.) caught my eye. The pace picked back up again with chapter 4, Intrusion Investigation, particularly where there was discussion of "fact versus speculation" and "Reporting Audiences". In my experience, these are just two of the areas where any investigation can easily veer off course. Of course, without question, I spent a great deal of time in chapter 5, Windows Forensic Analysis! However, that doesn't mean that the other chapters don't have a great deal of valuable information.
The real value of the Handbook is that it did not focus on any one platform, or on any one commercial product. Analysis of Windows, as well as *nix/Linux, Mac, and embedded systems are addressed, as was the network (including mobile networks). There was no singular focus on one commercial product, something you see in other books; instead, a combination of commercial, free, and open-source tools were used to illustrate various points. In one instance, three commercial applications were shown side-by-side to illustrate a point about deleted files. Even some of my own tools (RegRipper, wmd.pl, etc.) were mentioned!
Overall, I think that the book is an excellent handbook, and it definitely has a prominent place on my bookshelf. No one of us knows everything there is to know, and I even found little gems in the chapter on Windows forensic analysis. For anyone who doesn't spend much time in that area, or analyzing Macs, those chapters will be a veritable goldmine...and you're very likely to find something new, even if you are very experienced in those areas. The Handbook is going to be something that I refer back to time and again, for a long time to come. Thanks to Eoghan, and thanks to all of the authors who put in the time and effort to produce this excellent work.
Resources
Richard Bejtlich's review @TaoSecurity