Digital Forensics Playbook: Hands-on Recipes for Windows and Linux Systems

Digital forensics identifies and preserves digital evidence for legal use. By recovering data from diverse sources, investigators track trails vital for solving cybercrimes, managing network intrusions, and ensuring compliance. It is a key pillar of modern security and data recovery. This book systematically guides you through enterprise readiness, legal compliance, and setting up forensic environments using Python and PowerShell. You will master evidence acquisition across Windows, Linux, and macOS, while exploring network analysis, memory forensics, and malware dissection with Sysinternals and VirusTotal. The book also explores case management with Autopsy, mobile forensics for Android and iOS, and bit-for-bit disk imaging. Featuring over 100 practical recipes, you will learn professional DFIR reporting and cloud-native evidence collection within AWS and Azure. By the end of this book, readers will have the essential digital forensics skills to investigate, respond to, and recover from cyberattacks while preserving evidence for legal, regulatory, or internal use. Existing cybersecurity professionals will find it easy to acquire these skills, helping them achieve their digital forensics career goals. WHAT YOU WILL LEARN ¿ Understanding of core principles, concepts, and processes of digital forensics. ¿ Identifying, preserving, and presenting digital evidence in a court of law. ¿ Maintaining a strict chain of custody. ¿ Hands-on knowledge of tools, techniques, and approaches used by digital forensics professionals. ¿ Hands-on approaches to analyzing and investigating digital forensics cases and incidents. ¿ The fundamental, blended disciplines of digital forensics and incident response. ¿ Reconstructing system timelines. WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR This book is for cybersecurity professionals, CHFI aspirants, system administrators, and DevSecOps engineers seeking automated forensic skills. It serves researchers, faculty, and students needing practical expertise in Windows, Linux, and cloud forensics. Basic familiarity with computer systems and security is recommended.