Wednesday, July 06, 2011

More Links

Meetup
Just a reminder about tonight's meetup:

Location: ReverseSpace (this is our location, unless stated otherwise)
Time: 7-8:30pm (this will be the time that we'll meet, unless stated otherwise)

Tonight, Tom Harper will be presenting...you can get a copy of his slides here.

Also, please notice that I've created a "NoVA Forensics Meetup" page, linked on the right-hand side of this blog. 

Mobius
I ran across the Mobius Forensic Framework this morning (because it had been updated), and found it very interesting.  Mobius is a Python-based framework "...that manages cases and case items, providing an abstract interface for developing extensions. Cases and item categories are defined using XML files for easy integration with other tools."  It seems that this framework has been around for some time...the main link indicates that the last update was near the end of 2009.  The framework appears to have a Hive Report capability, as well.

This appears to be very different in function from the Digital Forensics Framework, now at version 1.1.0, and is definitely worth a look.

For/Sec LinkFest
Klaus has updated his blog again, and posted an expansive set of links regarding forensic and security tools.

I'm always looking to improve the work that I do, and I very often find some interesting links in what Klaus provides.  One was a reference to the eScan AV toolkit, from TinyApps.org, in Klaus' RSS feed.  If you work cases that involve detecting suspected malware ("Trojan defense"), this may be a tool that you'll want to employ as part of your malware detection process/checklist.

Xanda
Speaking of links, I ran across this page at Xanda, and found a number of very interesting links, such as an emulator for the PDP-11.  As with many other sites that provide lists of free/open-source/(some commercial) forensics tools, there will be a considerable amount of overlap, but there are also some links on this page that I haven't seen before, and I'm not about to discount anything at this point.  I mean, while I haven't been asked to analyze an Atari system, when I was at IBM our team was asked to perform analysis of mainframe systems more than once.  The Xanda page also has an entire section on steg tools.

Reading
I ran across this interesting bit of reading on the CERIAS blog, authored by Gene Spafford.  Beyond the mention of historically famous names in the DFIR community (from before there was really a DFIR community....) were the statements in the first paragraph regarding deployment of DFIR countermeasures.

As interesting (and immensely helpful) as these countermeasures may be, having performed a number of incident response engagements and analyzed even more drives and images, I think that the reality is that we have to just file this under "ain't gonna happen".  Now, don't get me wrong...I do believe that such measures are good security and would prove to be immensely useful; however, who's going to implement and monitor them, given the state of security to begin with?  What good is any of this going to do when the bad guys have already been through your infrastructure?

Now would countermeasures such as those Gene describes be useful...sure.  If they were properly deployed.

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