Feature Spotlight: Report Template Wizard

Ken Mizota

No forensic investigation is complete without a comprehensive report tailored to the intended audience. Whether the cases involve crime, civil litigation, or policy non-compliance, the end goal of an investigation is to share findings with others. EnCase Version 7 provides powerful tools to efficiently incorporate the findings of the investigation into a Report Template. While powerful, Report Templates can have a steep learning curve, and particularly in time-sensitive investigations, simplicity may be more desirable than power.

EnCase Version 7.10 adds the Report Template Wizard. You can quickly add a Bookmark Folder to the Report Template, specify metadata, perform basic formatting, and preview the report. The Report Template Wizard simplifies reporting while maintaining the power of Report Templates. Read on beyond the jump to learn more.

Feature Spotlight: Portable Triage

Ken Mizota

EnCase 7.10 now includes full EnCase Portable capabilities at no additional cost.

In this post, I’ll explain what this means to the investigator and show some practical tips on how to make use of your new-found ability. Acquire Live RAM? Detect encryption? Perform snapshot? Capture screenshots of running Windows? Learn more after the jump.

Feature Spotlight: SED Unlock with EnCase & WinMagic SecureDoc

Ken Mizota

Self-encrypting drives represent a very specific problem for digital investigators. The direction of technology is clear: within the next few years, strong encryption will be baked into the silicon of every hard drive from every major manufacturer. Self-encrypting drives (SED) offer greater data security than traditional full-disk encryption in that the data stored is always encrypted at rest and the keys to decrypt the data never leave the device, which means they cannot be practically brute-forced through traditional means.

SEDs render “cold boot” and “evil maid” attacks useless and offer instant encryption and crypto-erase when a drive needs to be repurposed. SEDs are very attractive, but present significant obstacles to traditional disk-based forensics. In this post, we’ll walk through how EnCase 7.10 works with WinMagic SecureDoc to enable forensic investigation of self-encrypting drives.

Case Study: Chesterfield County Police Department

Cynthia Siemens

Profile

Many digital investigators in law enforcement work for multiple teams and agencies. Keith Vincent is no exception. In his current role in the Economic Crimes Unit of the Chesterfield County Police Department, his title is Detective. In his earlier work as a deputized U.S. Marshal for the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Child Exploitation Task Force, he was the Task Force Officer, and in his work with Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC), he served as ICAC representative for his agency.

EnCase 7.09.04: Extracting Passwords from OS X Keychains

Ken Mizota

EnCase 7.09.04 is now available and contains several enhancements to make your investigations more efficient and comprehensive. Today’s digital investigators face a constant struggle to maintain comprehensive investigative skill sets, while continuously improving efficiency in the face of overwhelming growth of evidence and diversity of malfeasance. EnCase 7.09.04 makes reporting more efficient with the Flexible Reporting Template and reduces investigator effort by enabling decryption of McAfee Endpoint Encryption devices with the 64-bit EnCase Examiner. EnCase 7.09.04 expands on the strongest Windows-based investigation capabilities of OS X machines, adding the ability to decrypt and extract passwords from OS X keychains.

To gain access to this release register your dongle and you’ll receive a MyAccount email with download links.

In this article, I'll walk through the information that can be extracted from keychains and also provide sample EnScript-based techniques to expose this data in EnCase.

Digital Forensic Investigators’ Skills are Critical as Investigations Grow More Complex

Robert Bond

Digital forensic evidence is playing a larger role in determining the guilt or innocence of defendants in both civil and criminal matters. As technology captures movement, messages, photos, and the vast majority of what is done on laptops, smartphones, and tablets, it’s increasingly difficult for criminals to cover their digital tracks.