Free DME & DFIR Resources

Alan Paller is director of research for the SANS Institute, a provider of security training and certification.

A few Sundays ago, the managing partner and IT partner from a large law firm in New York came to my home for a visit. It wasn't just for coffee. They had flown down to Washington to discuss what they might do in the aftermath of a troubling visit from the FBI.

Here's how the conversation went. Read full story >

If you're responsible for recovering video evidence from DCCTV systems, be sure to check out our new class "DVR Assessment & Video Recovery". We'll be in WA, MD, TX and NY in the coming months. Hope to see you in class!

Training Schedule

The iTwin USB dongle isn’t new: it started life as a easy way to transfer files between two computers without a wire. It looks like two USB drives stuck together at the tail, and its it worked admirably moving files from one computer to another as if there was a hard cable between them. Well, it just added another awesome feature through software, which is real encryption for your Dropbox.

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Finally, took a few hours of poking through code, but the ReCAPTCHA problem has finally been resolved.  During the process of troubleshooting, I identified why members sometimes received the "Sorry, your session..." error when trying to post to the member Wiki; this too should be resolved.

Additionally, we moved the Wiki menu options to the top level of our main menu, so they're always readily available when logged in to our site.  Testing was performed with the latest versions of IE, FF, Chrome and Rockmelt.  As always, please let me know if you ever encounter any other issues.  Thanks to those who brought the ReCAPTCHA Craziness to my attention! 😎

I distinctly remember about ten years ago when a local police chief told us that there was no computer crime in his village. I also remember literally laughing out loud when I heard that.(Seriously, I was bent over from laughing so hard.) Digital evidence is being collected at an unprecedented rate each and every single day, and you’d probably be hard pressed to find anyone more intimately familiar with that then your local multimedia, computer, or mobile device analyst.

I stand corrected. First, I did find a reference to Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) and down sampling uncompressed NTSC video in the joint Forensic Imaging and Multi-media Glossary (PDF) published by the IAI and LEVA, the final version of which was released in July, 2006. Second, in an effort to simplify this discussion, I’ve over simplified the Interpolation Methodology I described in Part 2. I will be expanding on that in this post, in far more detail than I had originally intended.

Intel Monday announced a new line of solid-state drives (SSDs) that are based on the serial ATA (SATA) 3.0 specification, which doubles I/O throughput compared to previous-generation SSDs.

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The ongoing clash between plasma and LCD HDTVs (or rather, their owners) rivals classic tech wars such as Apple versus Microsoft and Nintendo versus Sega in its ability to destroy friendships and alienate loved ones. As with any good tech fight, however, the skirmishes that occur in review comments and home theater enthusiast forums across the Internet are typically characterized by fans exchanging glib one-liners (in this case, about black levels and refresh rates). And many of those one-liners haven't been updated since 2002.

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As you may know, version 1.10.4 of Avery Lee's video capture/processing utility was released a little over a month ago. I've packaged it with several of the input plugins I regularly use, with one notable exception; the FFmpeg input plugin. I've had nothing but issues w/version 0.7 of the FFmpeg input plugin when used with version 1.10.4 of VirtualDub, so I've provided the source but did not install the plugin in my v1.10.4 package.

The v1.9.11 package contains all of the same input plugins, and version 0.7 of the FFmpeg input plugin is loaded automatically as well. Head past the break for the links to download.

The Law Enforcement and Emergency Services Video Association (LEVA) is participating in the development of a national standards document for police interview rooms. In support of this effort, standards facilitators are conducting a survey to determine the state of law enforcement interview rooms today. LEVA requests your agency's participation by completing a brief survey. The survey takes approximately five (5) minutes to complete. The survey can be found at:https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JDDZLFW

The survey results will be provided to survey participants at the completion of the project.

Please forward this survey announcement to the person in your agency who is responsible for the maintenance and control of your interview rooms.

Thank you for your assistance.

Blaine Davison, President
LEVA

Google is aiming to put the “net” in netbook with Chrome OS, a lightweight operating system that focuses on web apps and online storage.

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I posted a new page last week under our Professional Community menu called Free DME & FVA Tools. Hope you find it helpful.

George Reis, President and owner of Imaging Forensics, Inc., has launched a new MeetUp group for those involved with technical and scientific imaging and photography.

For more information or to join the group please visit http://www.meetup.com/OC-Technical-Scientific-Photography-Imaging-Group/.