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Mac OS X Security Part 2: The Mac Forensic Toolkit

Mar 23, 2007

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Part 1 of Ryan Faas' security series discussed the processes behind investigating inappropriate or criminal activities using data forensics, including the importance of not contaminating evidence by acquiring and working with forensic-quality disk images of affected hard drives. This article moves from the basic methods for performing a forensic investigation under Mac OS X to profiling the various tools that are available to perform such investigative work.

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Hardware Write Blockers

Write blockers are physical devices that attach to SCSI, IDE, and SATA hard drives at one end and to a computer via FireWire or USB 2.0 on the other end. Similar to external drive enclosures, write blockers have one important additional feature: they prevent the computer from writing any data to the drive. As discussed in part 1 of this series, one of the principal rules of forensic investigation is to not contaminate your evidence, which even mounting a hard drive under normal conditions with Mac OS X (and most other operating systems) will do. While there are methods to acquire a disk image or copy of a disk using Mac OS X without using a write blocker, those methods are not foolproof and it is possible to accidentally mount or modify the evidentiary drive. Write blockers ensure that you cannot contaminate the drive and offer a way to prove that fact. They range in price from around $100 to upward of $500 depending on the features included.

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