Law enforcement agencies and security researchers have their work cut out for them. Cybercrime is on the rise every year, and extracting the necessary evidence becomes harder over time. As it turns out, some digital forensics tools are becoming more popular and widespread than ever before. Some types of digital forensics may surprise quite a lot of people, as solving cybercrime is a far more complex business than initially assumed.

#5 CAINE

Unlike what most people would assume, there is a dedicated operating system to conduct digital forensics. Under the CAINE – Computer Aided Investigative Environment – banner, cybercrime units make use of this Linux distribution to go about their day-to-day operations. This tool is completely open source and can be downloaded

#4 X-Ways Forensics

This type of digital forensics has the most alien-esque name of all. That is not entirely surprising, as X-Ways forensics encompass a wide variety of tools and methods to be used by cybercrime units. This advanced platform runs on every version of Windows, it is rather lightweight and can provide rather efficient results.

Among its main features is disk cloning, detecting deleted or lost hard disk partitions, activity logging, and verifying the authenticity of data sets. Moreover, the toolkit can extract metadata from file types, and even retrieve emails from a growing number of available email clients. Given the threat cybercrime poses these days, such a suite of digital forensics tools is a necessity.

#3 EnCase

On paper, EnCase and X-Ways Forensics are not all that different. Both solutions pack a ton of powerful features. EnCase is mainly focusing on extracting data from various devices and revealing potential evidence related to the investigation. EnCase is not a free tool, however, the US$995 price tag is more than acceptable for what it can provide in the war against cybercrime.

#2 Volatility

Malware has been one of the most prominent cybersecurity threats of 2016. Tools such as Volatility make the job a bit easier for researchers. This toolkit is used for malware analysis and incident response. Additionally, information can be retrieved from a running process, the network connection, and DLLS. For a tool that comes at no cost, Volatility is a top software solution in the field of digital forensics.

#1 XRY

Mobile digital forensics solutions are in high demand these days. XRY is one of the top mobile forensics tools which analyzes and recovers crucial information from tablets and smartphones. Through the hardware client, investigators can connect mobile devices to a computer, and the proprietary software performs a full analysis of the device. Moreover, XRY is compatible with all major mobile operating systems, and even retrieves previously deleted data.

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