Forensic People Essay

Computer forensics is the need of carrying out computer related investigations to find legal evidence to related crimes. In order to carry out these investigations, forensics experts use computer forensics tool kits that help them in their investigations. There are a number of forensics tool kits used in different forensic activities such as: Password recovery tool kit (PRTK) This is a tool used to recover lost passwords. It is used to recover passwords of commonly used applications such as Microsoft Office, Lotus 1-2-3 in Windows NT. The file whose password is lost is dragged and dropped onto the open window of the program and Password recovery tool kit recovers its password (Forensic People, 2009). The Password Recovery Toolkit enables the proper management of passwords; it has the capability of analyzing several files at one time and recovering all types of passwords regardless of length and character type. It is also multilingual in nature for it can also recover passwords set in different languages. It is also able to recover password from many applications close to 80. It is also secure as it requires a personal security code to be able to use it. After analyzing files and the recovery of their passwords it gives an optional report file. This tool is provided by access data which is a forensics expert company and it provides a variety of forensic tools (Forensic People, 2009). Source: Smart Doctor (www. recoverlostpassword. com) Metaviewer Metaviewer is a Forensic tool that is developed by pinpoint labs. It is used by forensic examiners to retrieve the metadata for specific files. Pinpoint Metaviewer enables the user to extract files system metadata that are contained in Microsoft Office Files. The information which is retrieved can be pasted into any application. It is used to retrieve OLE metadata for specific files by forensic experts (Pinpoint labs, 2009). Source: Pinpointlabs. com Web historian It is used to give a history of all the activities a person has been carrying out online. It can give a history of the activity on common web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, internet explorer, Netscape and opera. The tool has the capability of recording the paths for Internet activity files for each web browser Cliff’s (Jones & Belani, 2005). The tool also has the ability to reproduce the recovered data into HTML and Delimited Text File formats. The information normally gives the history of sites visited, activities on those sites and login time and also information got. This helps investigators to carry out investigations and get the suspicious activities of people online. This tool is available as a freeware tool and it’s provided by Red Cliff’s (Jones & Belani, 2005). Source: http://www. securityfocus. com/incidents/images/webfor4. jpg Wireless-Detective – Wireless Sniffer and Interception Tool Wireless-Detective is used by investigators for WLAN Lawful Interception. It is a Tool manufactured by Decision Group and assists in sniffing the WLAN so as to carryout investigation on wireless LAN Networks. Wireless-Detective is used to decode WLAN Internet traffic and reconstruct it in real time. Any online activity that is dependent on internet traffic can be sniffed and accessed. The tool captures the traffic and reconstructs all information in a list according to category and content format. It is able to search details and analysis can also be made on the captures traffic to determine evidence and also crack crimes online. This makes the Wireless LAN Detective the most preferred forensics tool for investigators because of its one stop ability to carry out investigations (Decision Group, 2010). X-way forensics. X-way forensic is a resourceful forensic tool that serves various needs of forensics investigators. It has diverse functionalities that support the collection of digital evidence and investigative process (X-ways Software Technology, 2010). This forensics tool offers a functionality of individual case management, the automatic generation of reports from activities and it is capable of recovering data using various techniques. It has time saving capabilities and is not vulnerable to data hiding techniques such as host protected areas (X-ways Software Technology, 2010). The X-ways forensics tool is supplied by X-ways software technology AG. Conclusion Computer forensics tools are very useful in helping forensic experts in retrieving evidence that is important for law makers to prosecute against crimes. It is a fast growing field that is very dynamic as it faces many cyber crime challenges. Thus it is very important for the computer and internet users to be aware of the risks they are facing and how to avoid them. References Decision Group, (2010), Wireless-Detective – Wireless Sniffer and Interception Tool. Retrieved From http://www. edecision4u. com/network_forensics_news. html Forensic People, (2009), Your One stop for Forensic Solutions, Decryption tools. Retrieved From http://www. forensicpeople. com/products. asp? tProductGroupId=1&tProductId=3 Jones, K. J. & Belani, R. (2005), Web Browser Forensics, Part 1 Retrieved From http://www. symantec. com/connect/articles/web-browser-forensics-part-1 Pinpoint labs, (2009), Free Software Utilities. Retrieved From http://www. pinpointlabs. com/new/utilities. html X-ways Software Technology, (2010), X-ways Forensics Integrated Computer Forensics Software. Retrieved From http://www. x-ways. net/forensics/