Free DME & DFIR Resources

One thing I really stress when training video evidence Technicians & Analysts is to stay in your lane. Don't go beyond your training & experience levels on any topic/tool/etc., no matter who is asking you to.

A related one is that an expert's job at trial is to leverage their expertise to make sure the Trier of Fact has accurate evidence & information, not to be an advocate for one party or the other.

I've had several students over the years tell me that my passionate articulation of one or the other has saved their case or even their career. Two rather recently.

Honored & proud, of course, but I always like to point out to them that they are the ones that did all the hard work and stood their ground.

Keep being great & doing great things my friends! 😎

A few months ago, my wife got up on a Sunday morning at 3:30am and stood in line at Toys-R-Us to pick up a Nintendo Wii for our son.  Neither her or I have every done anything like that before and trust me when I tell you she's not a morning person, so I was absolutely amazed that she not only got up that early, but even more so that she stood in line in the freezing cold for hours just to get the darn thing. 😮

This afternoon my son and I were playing Guitar Hero III on the Xbox 360 and out of the blue decided to finally configure the Wii for Internet connectivity.  As you probably know, Wii has a Wi-Fi adapter built in, but I just never took the time to configure our router and the settings on the Wii.  Well, within a few minutes of our decision we were online surfing the Web on our Toshiba 46" HD TV.

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.

Full Story

It's been three years since we first heard about DARPA's ARGUS-IS, but thanks to a PBS Nova special entitled "Rise of the Drones," we finally have more information about the 1.8-gigapixel camera that is supposedly the highest-resolution surveillance system in the world.

Full story

Apple boasts that its just-released OS X 10.7 operating system (codenamed Lion) includes over 250 new features. While the marquee features make Mac desktops and notebooks a little more like the iPad, there's far more than that. Some of the improvements make QuickTime more usable.

Full Story

Today Google launched Google Drive, a free-if-you-just-need-5GB-of-storage Dropbox-like service that lets you easily store and share files in the cloud.

Read full story >

Brett Shavers, author and one of the main developers of the WinFE forensic boot environment, has released a free online training course on WinFE.

Online training is a great way to supplement classroom training, providing it's from a well organized and reputable source. It's great to see more options for online and flipped classroom training related to digital forensics, and I can assure you you'll be seeing even more soon! ;)

Color us unsurprised that Ivy Bridge is destined to be faster and smaller than its predecessor, but unbeknownst to us is an interesting tidbit concerning the upcoming architecture's GPU. The revamp will support resolutions in excess of 4K...

Full story:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/19/intel-ivy-bridge-gpu-to-support-4k-resolutions

Improper cabling is the most common mistake made when setting up home theatre systems. Periodically I'll get a call or email from a friend or family member who just brought home their new HDTV, and the picture just doesn't seem right. More often than not, the obvious difference in picture quality from when you watched it in the store to when you set it up at home is the direct result of improper cabling. So here's the skinny, short and sweet.

ALWAYS USE COMPONENT VIDEO CONNECTIONS
Component video provides the best quality image, as it separates the video signal into three channels (red, green, blue), subsequently providing more bandwidth per channel. Audio is carried separately, usually via stereo RCA connections. For true HDTV you'll need to use the component connection, and its obviously ideal for other video sources as well (such as DVD players/recorders).

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 

The DoJ sent a letter to the attorneys for the Baltimore Police Department.

Read full story >

QuickFire thinks so, which is why it's introducing the T-Video Transcoding Platform V1100, a single-RU box with multiple Ethernet connectors and 11 quad-core Core i7 mobile CPUs.

Full story

It's the video millennium. Every modern mobile phone is a video camera and a video player. Video displays are everywhere, from taxicabs to endcaps. Webcams perch like pigeons on every major tourist destination in the world. So it's no surprise that video sharing has become an industry, and that legal controversy has followed. The Southern District of New York recently announced its much-anticipated decision in Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube Inc., 2010 WL 2532404 (S.D.N.Y. June 23, 2010), granting summary judgment in favor of YouTube. The decision breaks no new ground, but it continues a trend: Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, owners of copyrights to videos will have the burden of policing the internet.

Full story:
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202466695461