DEFT : Digital Evidence & Forensic Toolkit Live DVD

1. DEFT (Digital Evidence & Forensic Toolkit) is a customized distribution of the Ubuntu live Linux CD@12.10. It is an easy-to-use system that includes excellent hardware detection and some of the best open-source applications dedicated to incident response and computer forensics.DEFT comes bundled with DART2 (Digital Advanced Response Toolkit) and the very best open source Windows Computer Forensic tools. Using LXDE as desktop environment and WINE to manage Windows tools under a Linux kernel, and a mount manager as tool for device management, this distro has a loyal following and we encourage you to use it.DEFT seems to be very well supported with a long list of official developers and contributors. The main developers seem to be a mix of professors, forensic (legal) experts, consultants, engineers, network specialists and more. Several law enforcement professionals are also associated with this project making it a forensics tool of choice for Information Security professionals. According to their site the distro is designed to be used by anyone working within a Response, Cyber Intelligence and/ or Computer Forensics capacity.

2.   Further to this very basic intro I give you here the screenshots as I set it up live on my virtual box.

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3.   Details at http://www.deftlinux.net/

Windows 8 and Live USBs & CDs at logger Heads!!

1.  One feature of Windows 8 launched recently has been disabling the option to boot from a Live CD/DVD or a USB right at the beginning.....recently got hold of a Windows 8 laptop of a friend and being in the habit of recommending opensource software's I tried showing him a live DVD of Ubuntu 13.04 but was surprised that every time it booted I could never see the option of selecting option of where to boot from?...that was it...i had no option but to Google and got the answer....the option to boot any windows PC with a live DVD is passe with Windows 8....now the user has to be specific of selection of boot device only once he is inside the OS interface.Bad...Bad...Bad......that's SECURE BOOT by terminology of Microsoft

2.   Dedicated Linux users and communities are the once who immediately start getting irritating owing to this feature that has no choice as on date.The purpose of Secure Boot is to put an end to computer viruses that sneak between the hardware and the operating system. These bootkits work by getting themselves before the OS is loadde, then they make changes to the operating system while it lies defenseless on disk, and then they load the now defenseless operating system and have their way with it. Secure Boot counters the bootkit by ensuring the hardware verifies the identity and authenticity of the software that sits between the hardware and the operating system - the bootloader, and also the software embedded in hardware devices like network and graphics adapters.Although going by the past threats Secure Boot sounds like a smart solution to the bootkit problem but this would be a problem for the majority of users in long run who rely solely on pirated copies of Windows OS.!!!!

3.  This is because today most of the vendors dealing in piracy or the users using pirated DVDs of OS have a option of formatting the PC and then reloading a new OS if the present OS has some issues....and this was possible since he/she would simply choos the BOOT FROM DVD option in the beginning...but now what?If some thing goes awry with your Windows 8 OS,there is no way to access your windows or at the best you need to run to your MS maintenance site.....so there is one good aspect that it is certainly going to curb piracy....but what about the security professionals ???

4. No denying the fact that a LIVE DVD is one of the prized possession of every IT security professional that has a plethora of advantages...so does windows 8 mean an end to all those advantages!!!!its a land lock situation for windows users.I am sure this is not going to last long...may be by windows 8.1 they do something about it!!!!