Digital Forensics Now

Heather Charpentier & Alexis "Brigs" Brignoni

A podcast by digital forensics examiners for digital forensics examiners. Hear about the latest news in digital forensics and learn from researcher interviews with field memes sprinkled in.

  1. 24 d’ag.

    Bite The Log Archive Cracker And You’re Hooked

    Send us Fan Mail AI is speeding up digital forensics, but speed without control is how good labs get burned. We dig into a safer way to work: use AI-assisted coding to generate a repeatable process, then test it against a real corpus of known extractions so results stay deterministic, verifiable, and defensible. If you’ve ever felt your LLM results “drift” from run to run, this mindset shift is the difference between a helpful assistant and a hidden liability.  We also get practical with what’s new across the community: a free macOS timestamp utility, Android intrusion logs (and how to extract and parse them when a user has opted in), and a deep look at Apple Unified Logs and log archives as an underrated iOS forensics goldmine. The big takeaway on logs is interpretation: one scary-looking line is not a conclusion. You have to read the surrounding sequence of events to avoid false narratives, and we talk about how newer workflows can process log archives directly from extractions without requiring a Mac.  From there we move into evidence sources that often decide cases: iOS Health database artifacts, LevelDB and IndexedDB for browser forensics, and a standout BitLocker improvement that can auto-unlock secondary encrypted volumes when keys are preserved in a system image. Finally, we walk through reporting at scale with LAVA, the LEAPPs viewer that adds conversation views, analytics, tagging, notes, and LAVA subset exports for massive chats that would otherwise choke HTML reports.  If this helped you rethink your workflow or gave you a new artifact to chase, subscribe, share the episode with your lab, and leave a review so more examiners can find it. What tool or artifact do you want us to test next? Notes: Timestamped - https://thebinaryhick.blog/2026/08/16/timestamped/ Brett Shavers Blog Posts - http://linkedin.com/pulse/let-ai-run-your-case-make-you-stupid-brett-shavers-vproc/ Android Logical Extractor - https://github.com/prosch88/ALEX Tim Korver Blog Posts - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-korver/recent-activity/articles/ SANS DFIR Summit & Training - https://www.sans.org/cyber-security-training-events/digital-forensics-summit-2026 MSAB Digital Summit - https://www.msab.com/msab-mobile-forensics-digital-summit-2027/ Cellebrite 101 - https://community.cellebrite.com/s/101 HEART Metadata Forensics - https://github.com/MetadataForensics/HEART_by_Metadata_Forensics Arsenal - https://arsenalrecon.com/products LEAPPs & LAVA - leapps.org

  2. 11 de jul.

    Getting Our Tools Together

    Send us Fan Mail We come back from a busy conference stretch and go hands-on with new digital forensics tools that speed up real workflows across vehicle, iOS, and Android investigations. We also tour major updates to LEAPPs and LAVA, show how Batch LEAPP changes multi-extraction processing, and end with a hard question about validation that every examiner needs to take seriously.  Show Notes: North Loop Consulting: Sedgwick and NCL Spectator https://northloopconsulting.com/ Crush Digital Forensic Analysis Workbench: https://github.com/kalink0/crush-forensics LEAPPS: leapps.org

  3. 3 de juny

    The AI Investigative Framework Interview with Heather Barnhart

    Send us Fan Mail  AI is becoming more common in digital forensics, but the biggest danger is people trusting it too much. Heather Barnhart discusses a framework that helps examiners assess when AI is appropriate, where it can assist with tasks like triage, and where it should not be used, while keeping trained human experts responsible for decisions.  Notes: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/heather-barnhart-cellebrite_ai-dfir-digitalforensics-ugcPost-7463670252950847488-b7s-/

  4. 6 de maig

    Truth Crime Forensics

    Send us Fan Mail “The tool said” might be the fastest way to lose a jury. Recorded live at IACIS, we sit down with Stacy Eldridge and Becky Passmore of Parsing The Truth One Bite At A Time, two former FBI senior forensic examiners who build a true crime-ish podcast around one thing most shows ignore: the digital artifacts and the courtroom testimony that prove what happened. https://parsingthetruth.com/

  5. 17 de març

    Live From the MSAB Digital Summit 2026!

    Send us Fan Mail Tool output can look authoritative while still being dangerously easy to misread, and we’ve both seen how fast that goes sideways when a case hits court. Live from the MSAB Digital Summit 2026, we walk through a simple principle that saves careers: an artifact is a clue, not a conclusion. We talk about how “artifact worship” happens, how to build real corroboration, and why multiple records on the same phone are not automatically multiple lines of evidence. We also get honest about forensic reporting and peer review. Assuming “legal will catch it” is a trap, because attorneys and supervisors may not be able to validate the technical meaning of a timestamp, a parser decision, or an attribution statement. We share practical ways to write clearer digital forensics reports, verify tool parsing, and test your assumptions so you’re not learning hard lessons under oath. If you work mobile device forensics, this section is for you. From there we shift into training and deep technical skills that are quickly becoming baseline: Android RAM acquisition and analysis, what kinds of artifacts can show up in memory, and why RAM can hold evidence you may never find in a file system extraction. We also unpack protocol buffers (protobuf) and the uncertainty that comes with app data when the .proto schema is missing, plus why that matters when AI and automation start “helping” with interpretation. We wrap with an ALEAPP update, a reminder that a portable tool report isn’t analysis, and a quick look at how standards like Daubert and Frye raise the bar for methodology. Notes: Brett Shavers Blogs:  It’s Not Artifact Worship When One Artifact Actually Changes the Case https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/its-artifact-worship-when-one-actually-changes-case-brett-shavers-nwi6c/ I Thought Legal Would Catch It. They didn’t. https://www.brettshavers.com/brett-s-blog/entry/i-thought-legal-would-catch-it-they-didnt IACIS https://www.iacis.com/events/in-person/2026-orlando-training-conference/

  6. 9 de gen.

    From Wins to Wishlists: Digital Forensics Year in Review

    Send us Fan Mail A blue jay, a busted feeder, and a brand-new camera set the tone, but only briefly.  We kick off the new year with updates from the Florida ICAC conference, including firsthand courtroom experience watching frame rate and frame count testimony in action. The episode centers on Frame Counts Galore, an open-source script for extracting and hashing every video frame, calculating true variable frame rates, and producing transparent, courtroom-ready logs and reports. We cover upcoming DFIR conferences, introduce a lightweight AI Provenance Scanner for fast C2PA and metadata checks, and reflect on standout moments from the digital forensics year—especially the impact of open-source tools and honest conversations about the realities of the work.  The episode closes with a 2026 wish list focused on stronger education, fair workloads, and customizable forensic reporting that analysts can actually defend in court. Happy New Year to the DFIR community. Notes: Frame Counts Galore- https://github.com/abrignoni/frame-counts-galore Upcoming Conferences-  https://www.iacis.com/                         https://www.msab.com/digital-summit-2026/  https://magnetvirtualsummit.com/               https://www.technosecurity.us/ https://ofta.cellebrite.com/event/cellebrite-c2c-user-summit-2026/ AI Provenance Scanner-   https://github.com/abrignoni/AI_Provenance_Scanner Brett Shavers Blogs-                                                     https://www.brettshavers.com/ UFADE & ALEX-                                                               https://github.com/prosch88

  7. 30/10/2025

    Brett Shavers Blogging Extravaganza!

    Send us Fan Mail This episode digs into the habits that actually hold up: learning from CTF wins and post-event reviews, exploring scholarships and Reno trainings that build technical muscle, and walking through expert-witness prep that turns courtroom stress into structured, confident testimony. We’ll unpack Brett Shavers’ reminder that truth alone doesn’t win cases—procedure, documentation, and bias-aware methods do. Clear writing matters too; vague language can undermine solid work. On the tools side, RabbitHole v3 now recovers deleted SQLite records and rebuilds them into query-ready databases—speeding validation and reporting without losing traceability. We’ll also demo the new Android Logical Extractor: pull device info, logs, and scoped chat data with hashes and ready-to-file PDFs. It’s ideal when consent is limited or full file systems aren’t on the table, and integrates cleanly with downstream workflows. Throughout, we emphasize one idea: tools are abstractions. If you can’t explain how a result was produced or reproduce it, you don’t own the finding. That’s especially true with AI. Generative models are nondeterministic—useful when documented, risky when their prompts or scope stay hidden. We’ll cover prompt disclosure, reproducibility, and how to write about “deleted” data with precision: previously existing, marked deleted, not referenced—describe state, not intent. If you’re serious about improving testimony, validating results, and adopting new tools without losing forensic footing, join us. Then share your take on AI prompts and language precision—what will you change in your next report? Notes:  IACIS Scholarships https://www.iacis.com/awards-and-scholarships/will-docken-scholarship/ https://www.iacis.com/awards-and-scholarships/womens-scholarship/ Training Opportunities! IACIS Reno https://www.iacis.com/events/in-person/reno-nv/ Free DFIR Test Images + Industry Tools to Analyze Them https://www.dfir.training/downloads/test-images New Blogs from Brett Shavers! https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/theres-lot-more-trial-than-you-may-know-even-have-100-brett-shavers-br4sc/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/case-almost-made-me-quit-dfir-shouldve-news-brett-shavers-pie1c/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-when-digital-forensics-lost-its-soul-brett-shavers-otkec/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/end-dfir-again-dfir-training-ab5jc/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-wreck-your-report-affidavit-testimony-one-word-brett-shavers-qkyvc/ Free Webinar https://www.suspectbehindthekeyboard.com/fighting-city-hall-dfir-lessons-from-a-pro-se-plaintiff Rabbithole Update https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rabbithole-dataviewer-sqllite-ugcPost-7384144022065274880-0d0D https://www.cclsolutionsgroup.com/forensic-products/rabbithole ALEX Release https://github.com/prosch88/ALEX https://github.com/RealityNet/android_triage

  8. 02/10/2025

    Blogs, blogs & blogs!

    Send us Fan Mail A baby camel, a high-speed chase, and a heartfelt tribute set the stage for a season opener that is equal parts human and hard-nosed. We pause to honor Mark Baker, mentor, officer, and friend. This episode spotlights a free Belkasoft AI course along with the much-anticipated release of Rabbit Hole v3, designed to tackle complex data structures. From there, it is all about blogs, and there are plenty of them. Mattia explores extraction nuances, showing how AFU versus BFU states and encryption classes still determine what you can recover from iOS and Android. Hexordia provides important guidance on first responder missteps, emphasizing how early handling and precise thinking safeguard the integrity of a case. We also showcase open-source and budget-friendly tools such as Autopsy and IPED, which expand analysis capacity without breaking the bank.  A hands-on demo of Gallery Builder illustrates how to create courtroom-ready visuals, paired with a reminder that “vibe coding” with LLMs is no substitute for validated forensic standards. Finally, we close with the latest LEAPP and LAVA updates, which continue to push practical workflows forward for the field. Notes: BelkaGPT: Effective Artificial Intelligence in DFIR https://belkasoft.com/belkagpt-training Training First Responders in Digital Evidence Handling: How To Protect Your Department from Case-Destroying Mistakes https://www.hexordia.com/blog/training-first-responders-in-digital-evidence-handling The Packd Byte https://www.thepackdbyte.org/ Two New Blogs from Mattia  http://blog.digital-forensics.it/2025/09/exploring-data-extraction-from-android.html https://blog.digital-forensics.it/2025/09/exploring-data-extraction-from-ios.html SWGDE https://www.swgde.org/documents/published-complete-listing/16-f-002-considerations-for-required-minimization-of-digital-evidence-seizure/ Gallery Builder https://github.com/charpy4n6/GalleryBuilder

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Informació

A podcast by digital forensics examiners for digital forensics examiners. Hear about the latest news in digital forensics and learn from researcher interviews with field memes sprinkled in.

Fitxa tècnica

  • Creació
    Heather Charpentier & Alexis "Brigs" Brignoni
  • Anys en actiu
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodis
    46
  • Qualificació
    Explícit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Digital Forensics Now Podcast
  • Lloc web del programa
    Digital Forensics Now

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