
Hello and welcome to the SDF series!
These are just a few tips to maximize your learning experience.
Before we begin the practicals it is important to understand Windows Shellbags and what types of user activity affect it as a forensic artifact.
Let's look at one of the registry hives we are working with. You will appreciate the automated tools we will be using after this.
Let's get our forensic system setup for the practicals.
I put together a tutorial on how to load your local drive into FTK Imager for those that have never used this program before.
In this practical we go over all the set up steps. I will not repeat these for each practical, rather, I will just discuss and go over notable findings. However, here I go over everything from beginning to end so you may use it as a reference.
Let's take a look at our first Shellbag findings.
Next we will expand this practical by making some view pane changes and seeing how this affects the shell bag record.
You may have noticed some Shellbag records have no created, modified or access times. This issue is clarified in this lesson.
First, let's get set up for this practical. Make sure your USB is wiped and ready for use before you begin.
In this practical we uncover some very interesting conflicting data about how Shellbag records may not be so accurate.
This last practical rounds out our USB exercises and gives us further insight to how Shellbag records behave.
Let's take a look at Shellbag records for networked drives.
Shellbags Explorer has a few reporting options worth mentioning and they are discussed here.
Let's review what we have learned.
Thanks for joining me in another edition of SDF. Hope to see you again!
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Welcome to the Surviving Digital Forensics series. This series is focused on helping you become a better computer forensic examiner by teaching core computer forensic skills - all in about one hour. In this class examine how to use Windows Shellbag records to help prove file use and knowledge. Shellbag records are created by certain user activity and can be used to show where a user has navigated to on a computer system and when they did so. Very powerful evidence!
As with previous SDF classes you will learn by doing. The class begins with a brief overview of the issue at hand. Then we set up our forensic systems and off we go. Learning is hands on and we will use low cost and no cost computer forensic tools to do so.
Expert and novice computer forensic examiners alike will gain from this class. Since we are doing it the SDF way we are going to teach you real computer forensic skills that you can apply using our method or customize to meet your needs. You will learn how you can use freely available forensic tools, all GUI based, to extract and analyze Windows Shellbag evidence.
Class Outline
1. Introduction and Welcome to the SDF series
2. Getting the most out of the class
3. Windows Shellbags - an overview
5. Shellbag Deep Dive
6. Setting up your forensic system
7. Validation practical 01 - local system activity
8. Validation practical 02 - attached USBs
9. Validation practical 03 - networked drives
10. Student Practical
11. Student Quiz
12. Reporting options
13. Review
14. Conclusion & thank you
A PC running Win7 or Win8 is required for this course. You need admin rights to the system. The system itself should be a test system containing no critical data. The forensic tools we use are all freely available, so beyond your operating system all you need is the desire to become a better computer forensic examiner.