June 2009 Archives

I read a while ago (don't remember where exactly) that a campaign started in The Netherlands on TV and radio to increase awareness with regards to cybercrime, created by the Department of Justice and GOVCERT. The first thing I though was: yeah right, like that's gonna work. Then yesterday I was in the Netherlands, and as I couldn't receive my favorite Belgian radio station anymore that far over the border, I had to listen to a local radio station. That's when I heard one of the awareness commercials, and it was actually quite nice, and seems like it might 'stick' to some people at least. The first part was a bit like trivial pursuit, where one person asks the question 'what is spoofing', and someone answers 'a new kind of dancing'. Then there was another, normal, commercial. And next was the second part of the awareness commercial, and said 'spoofing is acting like you are someone else on the Internet'. It's not the most accurate description, but for people not in information security they at least get the idea. I've searched the Internet for examples of other lines they use, but unfortunately couldn't find any. Nevertheless, very nice work!

I've known BackTrack for a while already, and it includes various nice tools for digital forensics. However, up till now, it was never 'good enough' for real forensic purposes, as it mounts drives etcetera. In BackTrack 4, this has changed, as you can now select to boot without swap and mounting drives.

Of course, as always, verify that it does what it says on the tin. But if it does, this is a very nice addition to a forensic or incident response toolkit. Forensic tools currently included in BackTrack are:

Autopsy
dcfldd
Foremost
Magic Rescue
Mboxgrep
scalpel
Vinetto

For more info about BackTrack and the various other tools included, visit the website or book one of their excellent training classes.