Customer Reviews

Hacking Exposed Computer Forensics, Second Edition: Computer Forensics Secrets & Solutions

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I use this text as the required text for a course I teach on Computer Forensics. Overall, it is an excellent introductory text. Students say that it is easy to read, which is exactly what I want in a textbook. However, I do not use it exclusively for lecture material. I pull my lecture material from a variety of texts, such as Real Digital Forensics, Incident Response (2nd edition), File System Forensic Analysis, and the other Hacking Exposed Textbooks.

The second edition is a welcome improvement. I really like the new section (Part V) where it discusses the practical cases, and what type of forensic techniques that you would use for each type of case.

I create all of my own lectures and labs for the classroom. I assign this text to students to fill in the gaps of the lectures.

I found this to be a good overview for deciding if I want to pursue this field or not. It goes over enough detail & highlights the process to help determine if I want to take the next step and spend the $$$$'s on the forensic software.

The beginning of "Computer Forensics - Hacking Exposed" in exciting, but after some chapters afterwards you will realize that all is very superficial and, worst, very focused in comercial tools (ENCASE). Almost none scenario are presented to explain how to use the tools, walking away from the real computer forensics.

Maybe the PART IV of this book are useful to learn law's subtleties (in fact, prove the the author is a real professional in forensic analysis), but is so little to buy this book.

Conclusion: I don't recommend this book.

I round up from 3.5 to 4 really. in general the series is very good. I picked up some very good notes from this particular book. I did consider picking up a cert in forensics but after reading this book and talking to some people who really do it, I now want to real part of it. hacking around with systems is 1 thing but creating a methodology, chain of custody, knowing all the tools to use and being responsible for possible court..... I'm better off reading but not specializing in this area. this book will not be a comprehensive source on how to perform all tasks but it does give you some high level information.

the reason I dinged the book was it completely ignores iphones. it would be one thing to say they're not covered in this book but there is NO MENTION during the mobile section. why even bother talking about smartphones if you're not going to say the word iphone? that's an area they need to address now, not years down the road.

you will learn somethings from the book. if nothing else, it will show being 'a forensic expert' had better have some real solid chops behind them before putting them out there. I'm adding a few new tools to my bag of tricks but leave the real stuff to experts