Popular Computer Forensics Top 21 Tools [Updated for 2019]

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Computer forensics is a very important branch of computer science in relation to computer and Internet related crimes. Earlier, computers were only used to produce data but now it has expanded to all devices related to digital data. The goal of Computer forensics is to perform crime investigations by using evidence from digital data to find who was the responsible for that particular crime.

For better research and investigation, developers have created many computer forensics tools. Police departments and investigation agencies select the tools based on various factors including budget and available experts on the team.

These computer forensics tools can also be classified into various categories:

Disk and data capture tools
File viewers
File analysis tools
Registry analysis tools
Internet analysis tools
Email analysis tools
Mobile devices analysis tools
Mac OS analysis tools
Network forensics tools
Database forensics tools

In this post, we are listing a few important and popular data forensics tools. Before proceeding further, I want to make it clear that tools are added in random order. So, please do not try to consider it as a ranking of the tools.

1. Digital Forensics Framework

Digital Forensics Framework is another popular platform dedicated to digital forensics. The tool is open source and comes under GPL License. It can be used either by professionals or non-experts without any trouble. It can be used for digital chain of custody, to access the remote or local devices, forensics of Windows or Linux OS, recovery hidden of deleted files, quick search for files’ meta data, and various other things.

Download: https://github.com/arxsys/dff

2. Open Computer Forensics Architecture

Open Computer Forensics Architecture (OCFA) is another popular distributed open-source computer forensics framework. This framework was built on Linux platform and uses postgreSQL database for storing data.

It was built by the Dutch National Police Agency for automating digital forensics process. It is available to download under GPL license.

Download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ocfa/

3. CAINE

CAINE (Computer Aided Investigative Environment) is the Linux distro created for digital forensics. It offers an environment to integrate existing software tools as software modules in a user friendly manner. This tool is open source.

Read More about it: http://www.caine-live.net/

4. X-Ways Forensics

X-Ways Forensics is an advanced platform for digital forensics examiners. It runs on all available version of Windows. It claims to not be very resource hungry and to work efficiently. If we talk about the features, find the key features in the list below:

Disk imaging and cloning
Ability to read file system structures inside various image files
It supports most of the file systems including FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT, TFAT, NTFS, Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, Next3®, CDFS/ISO9660/Joliet, UDF
Automatic detection of deleted or lost hard disk partition
Various data recovery techniques and powerful file carving
Bulk hash calculation
Viewing and editing binary data structures using templates
Easy detection of and access NTFS ADS
Well maintained file header
Automated activity logging
Data authenticity
Complete case management
Memory and RAM analysis
Gallery view for pictures
Internal viewer for Windows registry file
Automated registry report
Extracts metadata from various file types
Ability to extract emails from various available email clients.
And many more..

You can read the full list here: http://www.x-ways.net/forensics/

5. EnCase

EnCase is another popular multi-purpose forensic platform with many nice tools for several areas of the digital forensic process. This tool can rapidly gather data from various devices and unearth potential evidence. It also produces a report based on the evidence.

This tool does not come for free (see site for current pricing).

6. Registry Recon

Registry Recon is a popular registry analysis tool. It extracts the registry information from the evidence and then rebuilds the registry representation. It can rebuild registries from both current and previous Windows installations.

It is not a free tool. It costs $399.

Read more about it: http://arsenalrecon.com/apps/recon/

7. The Sleuth Kit

The Sleuth Kit is a Unix and Windows based tool which helps in forensic analysis of computers. It comes with various tools which helps in digital forensics. These tools help in analyzing disk images, performing in-depth analysis of file systems, and various other things.

Read more about it here: http://www.sleuthkit.org/

8. Llibforensics

Libforensics is a library for developing digital forensics applications. It was developed in Python and comes with various demo tools to extract information from various types of evidence.

Read more here: http://code.google.com/p/libforensics/

9. Volatility

Volatility is the memory forensics framework. It used for incident response and malware analysis. With this tool, you can extract information from running processes, network sockets, network connection, DLLs and registry hives. It also has support for extracting information from Windows crash dump files and hibernation files. This tool is available for free under GPL license.

Read more about the tool: http://code.google.com/p/volatility/

10. WindowsSCOPE

WindowsSCOPE is another memory forensics and reverse engineering tool used for analyzing volatile memory. It is basically used for reverse engineering of malwares. It provides the capability of analyzing the Windows kernel, drivers, DLLs, virtual and physical memory.

11. The Coroner’s Toolkit

The Coroner’s Toolkit or TCT is also a good digital forensic analysis tool. It runs under several Unix-related operating systems. It can be used to aid analysis of computer disasters and data recovery.

12. Oxygen Forensic Suite

Oxygen Forensic Suite is a nice software to gather evidence from a mobile phone to support your case. This tool helps in gathering device information (including manufacturer, OS, IMEI number, serial number), contacts, messages (emails, SMS, MMS), recover deleted messages, call logs and calendar information. It also lets you access and analyze mobile device data and documents. It generates easy to understand reports for better understanding.

More information here: http://www.oxygen-forensic.com/en/features

13. Bulk Extractor

Bulk Extractor is also an important and popular digital forensics tool. It scans the disk images, file or directory of files to extract useful information. In this process, it ignores the file system structure, so it is faster than other available similar kinds of tools. It is basically used by intelligence and law enforcement agencies in solving cyber crimes.

Download it here: http://digitalcorpora.org/downloads/bulk_extractor/

14. Xplico

Xplico is an open source network forensic analysis tool. It is basically used to extract useful data from applications which use Internet and network protocols. It supports most of the popular protocols including HTTP, IMAP, POP, SMTP, SIP, TCP, UDP, TCP and others. Output data of the tool is stored in SQLite database of MySQL database. It also supports IPv4 and IPv6 both.

Read more about this tool here: http://www.xplico.org/about

15. Mandiant RedLine

Mandiant RedLine is a popular tool for memory and file analysis. It collects information about running processes on a host, drivers from memory and gathers other data like meta data, registry data, tasks, services, network information and Internet history to build a proper report.

16. Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE)

Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor or COFEE is a tool kit developed for computer forensic experts. This tool was developed by Microsoft to gather evidence from Windows systems. It can be installed on a USB pen drive or external hard disk. Just plug in the USB device in the target computer and it starts a live analysis. It comes with 150 different tools with a GUI based interface to command the tools. It is fast and can perform the whole analysis in as few as 20 minutes. To law enforcement agencies, Microsoft provides free technical support for the tool.

Official website: https://cofee.nw3c.org/

17. P2 eXplorer

P2 eXplorer is a forensic image mounting tool which aims to help investigating officers with examination of a case. With this image, you can mount forensic images as a read-only local and physical disc and then explore the contents of the image with file explorer. You can easily view deleted data and unallocated space of the image.

It can mount several images at a time. It supports most of the image formats including EnCasem, safeBack, PFR, FTK DD, WinImage, Raw images from Linux DD, and VMWare images. It supports both logical and physical image types.

This tool comes for $199, but you can grab the limited feature version of the tool for free.

Read more here: https://www.paraben.com/p2-explorer.html

18. PlainSight

PlainSight is another useful digital forensics tool. It is a CD based Knoppix which is a Linux distribution. Some of its uses include viewing Internet histories, data carving, checking USB device usage, memory dumps extracting password hashes, information gathering, examining Windows firewall configuration, seeing recent documents, and other useful tasks. For using this too, you only need to boot from the CD and the follow the instructions.

This tool is available for free.

Read more here: http://www.plainsight.info/index.html

19. XRY

XRY is the mobile forensics tool developed by Micro Systemation. It is used to analyze and recover crucial information from mobile devices. This tool comes with a hardware device and software. Hardware connects mobile phones to PC and software performs the analysis of the device and extract data. It is designed to recover data for forensic analysis.

The latest version of the tool can recover data from all kind of smartphones including Android, iPhone and BlackBerry. It gathers deleted data like call records, images, SMS and text messages.

Read more about it: http://www.msab.com/xry/what-is-xry

20. HELIX3

HELIX3 is a live CD-based digital forensic suite created to be used in incident response. It comes with many open source digital forensics tools including hex editors, data carving and password cracking tools. If you want the free version, you can go for Helix3 2009R1. After this release, this project was overtaken by a commercial vendor. So, you need to pay for most recent version of the tool.

This tool can collect data from physical memory, network connections, user accounts, executing processes and services, scheduled jobs, Windows Fegistry, chat logs, screen captures, SAM files, applications, drivers, environment variables and Internet history. Then it analyzes and reviews the data to generate the complied results based on reports.

Helix3 2008R1 can be downloaded here: https://e-fenseinc.sharefile.com/d/sda4309a624d48b88

The enterprise version is available here: http://www.e-fense.com/h3-enterprise.php

21. Cellebrite UFED

Cellebrite’s UFED solutions present a unified workflow to allow examiners, investigators and first responders to collect, protect and act decisively on mobile data with the speed and accuracy a situation demands – without ever compromising one for the other. The UFED Pro Series is designed for forensic examiners and investigators who require the most comprehensive, up-to-date mobile data extraction and decoding support available to handle the influx of new data sources. Platform agnostic, the UFED Field Series is designed to unify workflows between the field and lab, making it possible to view, access and share mobile data via in-car workstations, laptops, tablets or a secure, self-service kiosk located at a station.

More information here: http://www.cellebrite.com/Mobile-Forensics

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Conclusion

These are a few popular digital forensics tools used by various law enforcement agencies in performing crime investigations. In this post, I added all kind of tools like premium, free, open source, computer forensics, mobile forensics and others. If you are going to start learning digital forensics, you can download or buy these tools and start working on those. It will help you in better understanding the whole process and tools.

These are not the only tools. There are various other free and premium tools available in the market. So, you can do more research on the tools to know more about those tools. These tools are added in random order. So, please don’t consider it as a ranking of the tools. I just tried to make a list of popular digital forensics tools only.

With the increasing use of digital data and mobile phones, digital forensics has become more important. Cyber crimes are also increasing day by day. So companies are also trying to launch more powerful version of the tools, and you need to be in touch of latest digital forensics news to know about recent releases.

If you’re in the market to find forensics training for law enforcement, check out InfoSec Institute’s computer forensics training boot camp. Just fill out the form at the top of this post to receive more info.

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