The Implications of Virtual Machine Introspection for Digital Forensics on Nonquiescent Virtual Machines


Book Description

The use of virtualized servers is on the rise. This results in a need for better forensic analysis capabilities for these virtualized environments. One of the answers to that has been the development of virtual machine introspection tools. Virtual machine introspection is a relatively new technique that has some important implications for digital forensics. Since it is performed outside of the virtual machine, it can help to alleviate the observer effect that is often encountered when performing a live analysis. This thesis tests how these tools can work in a nonquiescent environment and shows that the tools tested are able to produce reliable results.




Virtualization and Forensics


Book Description

Virtualization and Forensics: A Digital Forensic Investigators Guide to Virtual Environments offers an in-depth view into the world of virtualized environments and the implications they have on forensic investigations. Named a 2011 Best Digital Forensics Book by InfoSec Reviews, this guide gives you the end-to-end knowledge needed to identify server, desktop, and portable virtual environments, including: VMware, Parallels, Microsoft, and Sun. It covers technological advances in virtualization tools, methods, and issues in digital forensic investigations, and explores trends and emerging technologies surrounding virtualization technology. This book consists of three parts. Part I explains the process of virtualization and the different types of virtualized environments. Part II details how virtualization interacts with the basic forensic process, describing the methods used to find virtualization artifacts in dead and live environments as well as identifying the virtual activities that affect the examination process. Part III addresses advanced virtualization issues, such as the challenges of virtualized environments, cloud computing, and the future of virtualization. This book will be a valuable resource for forensic investigators (corporate and law enforcement) and incident response professionals. Named a 2011 Best Digital Forensics Book by InfoSec Reviews Gives you the end-to-end knowledge needed to identify server, desktop, and portable virtual environments, including: VMware, Parallels, Microsoft, and Sun Covers technological advances in virtualization tools, methods, and issues in digital forensic investigations Explores trends and emerging technologies surrounding virtualization technology




Advances in Digital Forensics XVII


Book Description

Digital forensics deals with the acquisition, preservation, examination, analysis and presentation of electronic evidence. Computer networks, cloud computing, smartphones, embedded devices and the Internet of Things have expanded the role of digital forensics beyond traditional computer crime investigations. Practically every crime now involves some aspect of digital evidence; digital forensics provides the techniques and tools to articulate this evidence in legal proceedings. Digital forensics also has myriad intelligence applications; furthermore, it has a vital role in cyber security -- investigations of security breaches yield valuable information that can be used to design more secure and resilient systems. Advances in Digital Forensics XVII describes original research results and innovative applications in the discipline of digital forensics. In addition, it highlights some of the major technical and legal issues related to digital evidence and electronic crime investigations. The areas of coverage include: themes and issues, forensic techniques, filesystem forensics, cloud forensics, social media forensics, multimedia forensics, and novel applications. This book is the seventeenth volume in the annual series produced by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 11.9 on Digital Forensics, an international community of scientists, engineers and practitioners dedicated to advancing the state of the art of research and practice in digital forensics. The book contains a selection of thirteen edited papers from the Seventeenth Annual IFIP WG 11.9 International Conference on Digital Forensics, held virtually in the winter of 2021. Advances in Digital Forensics XVII is an important resource for researchers, faculty members and graduate students, as well as for practitioners and individuals engaged in research and development efforts for the law enforcement and intelligence communities.




Advances in Digital Forensics XV


Book Description

Digital forensics deals with the acquisition, preservation, examination, analysis and presentation of electronic evidence. Computer networks, cloud computing, smartphones, embedded devices and the Internet of Things have expanded the role of digital forensics beyond traditional computer crime investigations. Practically every crime now involves some aspect of digital evidence; digital forensics provides the techniques and tools to articulate this evidence in legal proceedings. Digital forensics also has myriad intelligence applications; furthermore, it has a vital role in cyber security -- investigations of security breaches yield valuable information that can be used to design more secure and resilient systems. Advances in Digital Forensics XV describes original research results and innovative applications in the discipline of digital forensics. In addition, it highlights some of the major technical and legal issues related to digital evidence and electronic crime investigations. The areas of coverage include: forensic models, mobile and embedded device forensics, filesystem forensics, image forensics, and forensic techniques. This book is the fifteenth volume in the annual series produced by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 11.9 on Digital Forensics, an international community of scientists, engineers and practitioners dedicated to advancing the state of the art of research and practice in digital forensics. The book contains a selection of fourteen edited papers from the Fifteenth Annual IFIP WG 11.9 International Conference on Digital Forensics, held in Orlando, Florida, USA in the winter of 2019. Advances in Digital Forensics XV is an important resource for researchers, faculty members and graduate students, as well as for practitioners and individuals engaged in research and development efforts for the law enforcement and intelligence communities.







Advances in Digital Forensics V


Book Description

Digital forensics deals with the acquisition, preservation, examination, analysis and presentation of electronic evidence. Networked computing, wireless communications and portable electronic devices have expanded the role of digital forensics beyond traditional computer crime investigations. Practically every crime now involves some aspect of digital evidence; digital forensics provides the techniques and tools to articulate this evidence. Digital forensics also has myriad intelligence applications. Furthermore, it has a vital role in information assurance - investigations of security breaches yield valuable information that can be used to design more secure systems. Advances in Digital Forensics V describes original research results and innovative applications in the discipline of digital forensics. In addition, it highlights some of the major technical and legal issues related to digital evidence and electronic crime investigations. The areas of coverage include: themes and issues, forensic techniques, integrity and privacy, network forensics, forensic computing, investigative techniques, legal issues and evidence management. This book is the fifth volume in the annual series produced by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 11.9 on Digital Forensics, an international community of scientists, engineers and practitioners dedicated to advancing the state of the art of research and practice in digital forensics. The book contains a selection of twenty-three edited papers from the Fifth Annual IFIP WG 11.9 International Conference on Digital Forensics, held at the National Center for Forensic Science, Orlando, Florida, USA in the spring of 2009. Advances in Digital Forensics V is an important resource for researchers, faculty members and graduate students, as well as for practitioners and individuals engaged in research and development efforts for the law enforcement and intelligence communities.




On the Detection of Virtual Machine Introspection from Inside a Guest Virtual Machine


Book Description

With the increased prevalence of virtualization in the modern computing environment, the security of that technology becomes of paramount importance. Virtual Machine Introspection (VMI) is one of the technologies that has emerged to provide security for virtual environments by examining and then interpreting the state of an active Virtual Machine (VM). VMI has seen use in systems administration, digital forensics, intrusion detection, and honeypots. As with any technology, VMI has both productive uses as well as harmful uses. The research presented in this dissertation aims to enable a guest VM to determine if it is under examination by an external VMI agent. To determine if a VM is under examination a series of statistical analyses are performed on timing data generated by the guest itself.




Advances in Digital Forensics XVI


Book Description

Digital forensics deals with the acquisition, preservation, examination, analysis and presentation of electronic evidence. Computer networks, cloud computing, smartphones, embedded devices and the Internet of Things have expanded the role of digital forensics beyond traditional computer crime investigations. Practically every crime now involves some aspect of digital evidence; digital forensics provides the techniques and tools to articulate this evidence in legal proceedings. Digital forensics also has myriad intelligence applications; furthermore, it has a vital role in cyber security -- investigations of security breaches yield valuable information that can be used to design more secure and resilient systems. Advances in Digital Forensics XVI describes original research results and innovative applications in the discipline of digital forensics. In addition, it highlights some of the major technical and legal issues related to digital evidence and electronic crime investigations. The areas of coverage include: themes and issues, forensic techniques, filesystem forensics, cloud forensics, social media forensics, multimedia forensics, and novel applications. This book is the sixteenth volume in the annual series produced by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 11.9 on Digital Forensics, an international community of scientists, engineers and practitioners dedicated to advancing the state of the art of research and practice in digital forensics. The book contains a selection of sixteen edited papers from the Sixteenth Annual IFIP WG 11.9 International Conference on Digital Forensics, held in New Delhi, India, in the winter of 2020. Advances in Digital Forensics XVI is an important resource for researchers, faculty members and graduate students, as well as for practitioners and individuals engaged in research and development efforts for the law enforcement and intelligence communities.




Secure Acquisition of Digital Evidence from VMware ESXi Hypervisors


Book Description

The use of computer virtualization technologies has rapidly grown since the early 2000's. Factors driving this growth include the ever-increasing utilization of cloud computing as well as benefits to consolidating physical hardware within a data center. In addition to the growth of virtualization technologies, computer security incidents are also increasing. However, researchers have drawn attention to the problem that many of the traditional computer forensics tools and investigation techniques cannot be used to gather and analyze digital evidence obtained from virtualization technologies or cloud computing resources.To solve a part of this problem, this thesis proposes a new open source tool called ESXimager that securely acquires digital evidence from VMware ESXi hypervisors. The tool securely images selected virtual machine files running on VMware ESXi and ensures image integrity through the entire imaging process. Written in Perl and utilizing Tk, the tool makes use of an ESXi server's ability to execute shell commands. Bit-stream copies are created using the dd command, image integrity is verified using the MD5 and SHA1 hashing algorithms, and images are securely transferred to an external imaging machine with SFTP. With a secure image created, a forensics investigator can load the image into a separate computer forensics tool for analysis. ESXimagers capabilities are validated in a small yet realistic test environment. The tool connects to an ESXi server, creates images of selected virtual machine files, calculates multiple hashes, and securely transfers images to a local imaging machine. In addition, the tool detects if the integrity of an image file is compromised. With some additional development and testing in a larger environment, this could potentially become the go-to tool used to acquire images from VMware ESXi hypervisors.