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Welcome to 5065CEM!

Module Introduction

Welcome to 5065CEM - Applied Forensics; it's great to see you here,

Your module leader.

Note

The following text is straight out of the module information directory:

Module Aims and Summary Building on the Digital Forensics Fundamentals module, students will be exposed to industry-standard tools and methods in order to analyse and report on desktop/laptop system and mobile devices. The identification of digital evidence and its recovery and analysis in accordance with the relevant legislation and methodologies are thoroughly examined.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this module, the successful student will be able to:

  • Demonstrate competency with industry-standard forensic analysis software
  • Produce reports for varied audiences, including technical and non-technical readers
  • Perform forensic analysis on mobile devices

Indicative Content

Operation of common forensic software suites, such as AUTOPSY or FTK Careers in digital forensics Standards for investigation and reporting Mobile Forensics Legislation

Teaching and Learning

Learning will be facilitated through a variety of methods which may include seminars, labs, workshops, online activities and group work. Students are expected to engage in both class and online activities and discussions on AULA. This module also requires students to participate in additional guided reading and self-directed study to reinforce the learning gained from timetabled sessions.

You can learn more about the module in the Module Information area of this site. Here, you will also find information on how to access course and platform support.

See you soon,

The Module Leader

James' little colourfull of Boxes

Info

The following were taken from the 4061CEM module material as I consider them very useful boilerplate.

As a reminder from last years 4061CEM, during the course of the module you will often see boxes with special colours and icons. The purpose of each is:

Length

This box appears at the top of the project pages and will tell you how long the project runs for, in weeks. You can continue projects after the time set aside for them, but remember that two of them are assessed and you will need to submit by the deadline.

Topics

This box will usually be collapsed and can be opened by clicking the bar above. You can also collapse it again by clicking in the same place. Inside you will find a list of the core topics required by the project, each linking to the resource on that topic.

Learning Outcomes

In this box you will find a list of what you should be able to do by the end of the project. It's useful to think about these outcomes as you complete the project, because it can help you to see other uses for what you are learning, or how it might fit into the wider context of Cyber Security.

What does this box do?

This kind of box poses a question. Sometimes, the question will be in the title and an answer will be given in the collapsed box beneath it. In the box below, see if you can answer the question before viewing the answer.

What is ? (Click to see the answer)

The answer can be found using python: try print(2**24). You should get 16777216.

Tip

This is a tip box. You will find they contain hints and pointers for the projects.

Warning

Warning boxes are used to draw attention to something you need to be aware of. Mistakes that are easy to make, things that might have consequences if you get them wrong, like rm -rf ./ which is one (inadvisable) way to clear all content from the current directory, but if you prefixed it with sudo (which is common, or you're running as root, which you shouldn't be1) and miss that single full-stop character, then you can accidentally trash your Linux box.

Well done!

These boxes are used to point out what you have achieved by doing something. The idea is to show how the work you're doing relates to the wider topic of Cyber Security. All effort has been taken to make them seem encouraging, but there's at least a 50/50 chance they will seem patronising and we apologise in advance for that.

Note

"Stuff" there is some text here whith a magical pencil that makes you remember the things.

I Spotted a Bug or Typo

Info

As this is now customary for new modules.

Well done. Writing this module was hard because of how much content went into it, and the nature of the topic. Just like writing code, it's not possible to be 100% bug-free and so we use strategies to minimise errors in the first place and catch and correct them if they still occur.

The "minimising" step here is to have multiple people reading the material in advance of the module start, using a spell-checker, and developing in an environment that allows for version control, separation of content and presentation, reducing duplication and the chance for drift, etc. 2

As for catching bugs that make it through that process: you're the beta tester. If you find a bug, typo, factual error or even just have a good idea for improvement, let me module leader know. Unless you prefer to remain anonymous, you will be credited as a contributor to the page.

Contributors

This material was partially prepared by Antal Goldschmidt

The following contributors have helped to polish and improve the material:

Your name shall appear here

What do you call an excavated pyramid?

Unencrypted.

Footnotes

Yep, I shamelessly copied them as well.4

Many of the resources for the module have footnotes3, which are used for non-essential commentary from the author. They show up as a superscript number, just like the one in the last sentence. You can click them and be taken to the footnote. The footnote will have a little "return icon" that appears when you hover. Use this to go to the place from which the footnote took you.

  1. <grumpy old man rant> You should run as a standard user in any Unix-like system, even if you are the only user and you need to run lots of things with privileges. We tell people this all the time, but they don't listen. </grumpy old man rant> ↩

  2. Markdown, MKDocs, Git ↩

  3. All good writing has footnotes. Ask Terry Pratchett ↩

  4. by I, I mean Tono, copied form James. ↩