What Is Digital Forensics? Why You Need To Learn It to be a Succesful Cybersecurity Expert

Digital forensics is the process of preserving and evaluating electronic data, in order to reconstruct prior events. It’s like becoming a Forensic Scientist to investigate a crime scene but for computers instead.

Forensic Scientist investigating a scence (Source:pexels)

The gaoal is to acquire an accurate representation of the data on a target system and then evaluate it for clues, this is often used in incident response, where an analyst must find out if a system has been breached. There is a very big market for these types of jobs and it’s only growing.

To understand the basics of digital forensics its important to understand Steganography which is the practice of concealing data within other data. This in a digitalized environment includes concealing messages within the lowest bit images, concealing data with encrypted or random data and, in its simplest form, embedding hidden messages in image files.

Detecting steganography is dificult and requires careful physical examination and is often time-consuming. Steganalysis is the term used to define the method of dectecting modified files. While Stegware is a term used to represent the hiding of cyber-attacks, making detection an inadequate defence.

Some tools to search and get familiar with to become an expert in stenography:

• Crypture — Command line tool that performs steganography, it can be used to hide your sensitive data inside a BMP image file.
• Binwalk — A tool for searching a given binary image for embedded files and executable code.
• Steghide — Open source steganography software that lets you hide your secret file inside an image or audio file.
• rSteg — Java based tool that lets you hide textaul data inside an image, has the ability to embed or extract the data from the file and uses a PIN to add an extra layer of complexity.

In conclusion, Steganography is an important subject within forensics, as cyber-attacks are continually increasing. Learn how to stop attackers from trying to evade modern day security defences.

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