Free DME & DFIR Resources

I frequently get asked by friends and family about how to protect their PC or what software they should use to improve performance.  I've posted about some of the free software tools I use on my home PCs for this in the past, mentioning CCleaner, Advanced System Care, and other freeware tools...and I always recommend they be used in conjunction with a good anti-virus program and software firewall, of course. 

Despite all of the tools I use regularly to guard against malware, I recently stumbled on some pretty stubborn malware that I just couldn't get rid of with the tools I typically use, so I tried IObit's Security 360 Free and it worked like a charm.  Security 360 is designed to remove spyware, adware, trojans, keyloggers, bots and worms from 32bit and 64bit Windows  PCs (2000, XP, Vista, and Windows 7) and is free for non-commercial use.

If you happen upon some stubborn malware give it a shot.  Hopefully it'll work as well for you as it did for me.  Have a happy & safe 4th of July everybody!

Stumbled on to a well done video from Computerphile called "How Blurs & Filters Work", which I thought some of you may find interesting. Discussion centers on what an image kernel is and how they're used in image processing. Video is under 8 minutes and is embedded after the break. Enjoy.

What do 120Hz, 240Hz, 600Hz really mean for the picture quality of your new HDTV?

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EXT4 is a next generation file system replacement for the EXT2/EXT3 family of Linux file systems. It was accepted as "stable" in the Linux 2.6.28 kernel in October 2008[1]. As of this writing, it's starting to appear as the default file system in newer versions of several Linux distros. While the developers did try to maintain some degree of backwards compatibility with EXT2/EXT3, there is quite a bit that's new and different with EXT4. Popular forensic tools like the Sleuthkit are not fully compatible with these changes in EXT4, although some of their functionality does still work.

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Many types of laboratories gain accreditation to ISO 17025, regardless of the arena the laboratory works in, the same prerequisites must be established and implemented before accreditation may be obtained. The purpose of this article is to provide laboratories with an overview of a logical sequence towards, and identify the prerequisites required for, accreditation. It is hoped that the “road map” concept will provide a logical journey through the accreditation process.

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Imagine, if you will, business travelers gallivanting across the globe with nary a care in the world -- secure in the fact that should they lose their laptop by hook or by crook, they can disable it with a simple text message. Well, the dream is now a reality as Intel has put its third-gen vPro technology in Sandy Bridge Core i5 and i7 business chips, giving users the ability to lock down and reactivate a PC remotely via SMS.  

Full story:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/08/intel-brings-vpro-to-sandy-bridge-cpus-makes-losing-your-work-l 

Earlier this evening Jim Hoerricks, author of the book "Forensic Photoshop", announced the availability of a new online training course - "An Introduction to Forensic Photoshop". Jim's new online course is hosted and provided through the American Institute of Forensic Eduction, Inc..

When Canonical broke the news recently that Ubuntu 10.10 will include uTouch 1.0, a multitouch and gesture stack, it caused a flurry of excitement about the Linux release's potential for use in tablets.

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Merry Christmas & Happy New Year my friends!  Just a quick note to pass along season's greetings and give you a heads up regarding upcoming topics for my podcast, Nerds & Non/Sense™ .

In our January, 2020 episodes we'll be discussing The Illusion of Privacy.  Cambridge Analytica, "The Great Hack" documentary on Netflix, the Best Selling book "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" and chatting about how metadata about your daily activities is used to not only predict, but influence your behavior.  How you are the commodity, and most of you still don't even understand the extent to which you've facilitated this.

In our February, 2020 episodes we'll be discussing Work/Life Balance.  Mandatory professional therapy and mental health resources & evaluations for digital evidence practitioners, and how they should be mandated in ALL agency SOPs, IMHO.

The Organization of Scientific Area Committees (OSAC), which coordinates the development of standards and guidelines for the forensic science community under the auspices of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), will hold its first set of public meetings in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 16 and 17, 2015. The meetings will include presentation and discussion of priorities for developing standards and guidelines for each forensic science discipline.

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One of our members brought to my attention that the blog post form wouldn't allow you to save and publish your post.  Eventually, I found the reason and resolved it this morning.

You may have seen in a recent newsletter that we're cleaning up our database over the next few weeks.  If you missed that notice here's the skinny - we will be deleting all user accounts that have been inactive for more than 6 months.  If you have logged in within the last 6 months you're good to go; if not, you'll probably be deleted.  Any questions or concerns, as always, feel free to contact me.  Thanks for participating and have a great holiday weekend!

The Law Enforcement and Emergency Services Video Association (LEVA) has published the DRAFT version 3.0 of their Best Practices for the Acquisition of Digital Multimedia Evidence.  LEVA is soliciting community feedback on this document through March 31, 2010.

For additional information visit the official LEVA Publications page.

This week the SWGDE released a couple of new DRAFT documents for public comment relating to DME acquisition. The links below are directly to the related PDF documents. For more information please visit www.swgde.org:

• SWGDE Best Practices for Data Acquisition from Digital Video Recorders
• SWGDE Best Practices for Digital and Multimedia Evidence Video Acquisition from Cloud Storage