CAINE Linux

Last updated
CAINE Linux
Caine Linux 6 desktop screenshot.jpg
Developer Giovanni "Nanni" Bassetti
OS family Linux (Unix-like)
Working stateCurrent
Source model Open source
Initial release22 February 2009 (2009-02-22)
Latest release 13.0 "Warp" / March 16, 2023;4 months ago (2023-03-16)
Package manager APT
Platforms amd64 (x86-64), ARM
Kernel type Monolithic
Default
user interface 		MATE Desktop Environment
License Free software, mainly the GNU GPL
Official website caine-live.net

CAINE Linux (Computer Aided INvestigative Environment) is an Italian Linux live distribution managed by Giovanni "Nanni" Bassetti. [1] The project began in 2008 as an environment to foster digital forensics and incidence response (DFIR), with several related tools pre-installed. [2]

Contents

Purpose

CAINE is a professional open source forensic platform that integrates software tools as modules along with powerful scripts in a graphical interface environment. [1] Its operational environment was designed with the intent to provide the forensic professional all the tools required to perform the digital forensic investigate process (preservation, collection, examination and analysis). [3] [4] CAINE is a live Linux distribution so it can be booted from removable media (flash drive) or from an optical disk and run in memory. [5] It can also be installed onto a physical or virtual system. In Live mode, CAINE can operate on data storage objects without having to boot up a supporting operating system. The latest version 11.0 can boot on UEFI/UEFI+Secure and Legacy BIOS allowing CAINE to be used on information systems that boot older operating systems (e.g. Windows NT) and newer platforms (Linux, Windows 10).

Requirements

CAINE is based on Ubuntu 18.04 64-bit, using Linux kernel 5.0.0-32. [6] CAINE system requirements to run as a live disc are similar to Ubuntu 18.04. It can run on a physical system or in a virtual machine environment such as VMware Workstation.

Supported platforms

The CAINE Linux distribution has numerous software applications, scripts and libraries that can be used in a graphical or command line environment to perform forensic tasks. CAINE can perform data analysis of data objects created on Microsoft Windows, Linux and some Unix systems. One of the key forensic features since version 9.0 is that it sets all block devices by default to read-only mode. Write-blocking is a critical methodology to ensure that disks are not subject to writing operations by the operating system or forensic tools. [7] This ensures that attached data objects are not modified, which would negatively impact digital forensic preservation.

Tools

CAINE provides software tools that support database, memory, forensic and network analysis. [8] File system image analysis of NTFS, FAT/ExFAT, Ext2, Ext3, HFS and ISO 9660 is possible via command line and through the graphic desktop. [9] Examination of Linux, Microsoft Windows and some Unix platforms is built-in. CAINE can import disk images in raw (dd) and expert witness/advanced file format. These may be obtained from using tools that are included in CAINE or from another platform such as EnCase or the Forensic Tool Kit. [10]

Some of the tools included with the CAINE Linux distribution include:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linux distribution</span> Operating system based on the Linux kernel

A Linux distribution is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel, and often a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one of the Linux distributions, which are available for a wide variety of systems ranging from embedded devices and personal computers to powerful supercomputers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Knoppix</span> Linux distribution

KNOPPIX is an operating system based on Debian designed to be run directly from a CD / DVD or a USB flash drive, one of the first live operating system distributions. Knoppix was developed by, and named after, Linux consultant Klaus Knopper. When starting a program, it is loaded from the removable medium and decompressed into a RAM drive. The decompression is transparent and on-the-fly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU GRUB</span> Boot loader package

GNU GRUB is a boot loader package from the GNU Project. GRUB is the reference implementation of the Free Software Foundation's Multiboot Specification, which provides a user the choice to boot one of multiple operating systems installed on a computer or select a specific kernel configuration available on a particular operating system's partitions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Live CD</span> Complete, bootable computer installation that runs directly from a CD-ROM

A live CD is a complete bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than loading from a hard disk drive. A live CD allows users to run an operating system for any purpose without installing it or making any changes to the computer's configuration. Live CDs can run on a computer without secondary storage, such as a hard disk drive, or with a corrupted hard disk drive or file system, allowing data recovery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Multi-booting</span> Act of installing multiple operating systems on a single computer

Multi-booting is the act of installing multiple operating systems on a single computer, and being able to choose which one to boot. The term dual-booting refers to the common configuration of specifically two operating systems. Multi-booting may require a custom boot loader.

Disk cloning is the process of duplicating all data on a digital storage drive, such as a hard disk or solid state drive, using hardware or software techniques. Unlike file copying, disk cloning also duplicates the filesystems, partitions, drive meta data and slack space on the drive. Common reasons for cloning a drive include; data backup and recovery; duplicating a computer's configuration for mass deployment and for preserving data for digital forensics purposes. Drive cloning can be used in conjunction with drive imaging where the cloned data is saved to one or more files on another drive rather than copied directly to another drive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UEFI</span> Operating system and firmware specification

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface is a specification that defines the architecture of the platform firmware used for booting and its interface for interaction with the operating system. Examples of firmware that implement the specification are AMI Aptio, Phoenix SecureCore, TianoCore EDK II, InsydeH2O. UEFI replaces the BIOS which was present in the boot ROM of all personal computers that are IBM PC compatible, although it can provide backwards compatibility with the BIOS using CSM booting. Intel developed the original Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) specification. Some of the EFI's practices and data formats mirror those of Microsoft Windows. In 2005, UEFI deprecated EFI 1.10.

In computing, data recovery is a process of retrieving deleted, inaccessible, lost, corrupted, damaged, or formatted data from secondary storage, removable media or files, when the data stored in them cannot be accessed in a usual way. The data is most often salvaged from storage media such as internal or external hard disk drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), USB flash drives, magnetic tapes, CDs, DVDs, RAID subsystems, and other electronic devices. Recovery may be required due to physical damage to the storage devices or logical damage to the file system that prevents it from being mounted by the host operating system (OS).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GUID Partition Table</span> Computer disk partitioning standard

The GUID Partition Table (GPT) is a standard for the layout of partition tables of a physical computer storage device, such as a hard disk drive or solid-state drive, using universally unique identifiers, which are also known as globally unique identifiers (GUIDs). Forming a part of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) standard, it is nevertheless also used for some BIOSs, because of the limitations of master boot record (MBR) partition tables, which use 32 bits for logical block addressing (LBA) of traditional 512-byte disk sectors.

In Linux systems, initrd is a scheme for loading a temporary root file system into memory, to be used as part of the Linux startup process. initrd and initramfs refer to two different methods of achieving this. Both are commonly used to make preparations before the real root file system can be mounted.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PhotoRec</span> Open source data recovery software

PhotoRec is a free and open-source utility software for data recovery with text-based user interface using data carving techniques, designed to recover lost files from various digital camera memory, hard disk and CD-ROM. It can recover the files with more than 480 file extensions . It is also possible to add custom file signature to detect less known files.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">EFI system partition</span> Partition used by Unified Extensible Firmware Interface

The EFIsystem partition or ESP is a partition on a data storage device that is used by computers having the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). When a computer is booted, UEFI firmware loads files stored on the ESP to start installing operating systems and various utilities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Sleuth Kit</span>

The Sleuth Kit (TSK) is a library and collection of Unix- and Windows-based utilities for extracting data from disk drives and other storage so as to facilitate the forensic analysis of computer systems. It forms the foundation for Autopsy, a better known tool that is essentially a graphical user interface to the command line utilities bundled with The Sleuth Kit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wubi (software)</span> Ubuntu Linux installer for Windows

Wubi is a free software Ubuntu installer, that was the official Windows-based software, from 2008 until 2013, to install Ubuntu from within Windows, to a single file within an existing Windows partition.

The multi-stage booting process of Linux is in many ways similar to the BSD and other Unix-style boot processes, from which it derives.

Device configuration overlay (DCO) is a hidden area on many of today's hard disk drives (HDDs). Usually when information is stored in either the DCO or host protected area (HPA), it is not accessible by the BIOS, OS, or the user. However, certain tools can be used to modify the HPA or DCO. The system uses the IDENTIFY_­DEVICE command to determine the supported features of a given hard drive, but the DCO can report to this command that supported features are nonexistent or that the drive is smaller than it actually is. To determine the actual size and features of a disk, the DEVICE_­CONFIGURATION_­IDENTIFY command is used, and the output of this command can be compared to the output of IDENTIFY_­DEVICE to see if a DCO is present on a given hard drive. Most major tools will remove the DCO in order to fully image a hard drive, using the DEVICE_­CONFIGURATION_­RESET command. This permanently alters the disk, unlike with the host protected area (HPA), which can be temporarily removed for a power cycle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clonezilla</span> Drive cloning software

Clonezilla is a suite of open source drive cloning, drive imaging and system deployment utilities used to simplify deployment and maintenance of a group of computers. Clonezilla Server Edition uses multicast technologies to deploy a single image file to a group of computers on a local area network. Clonezilla was designed by Steven Shiau and developed by the NCHC Free Software Labs in Taiwan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foremost (software)</span>

Foremost is a forensic data recovery program for Linux. Foremost is used to recover files using their headers, footers, and data structures through a process known as file carving. Although written for law enforcement use, the program and its source code are freely available and can be used as a general data recovery tool.

Autopsy is computer software that makes it simpler to deploy many of the open source programs and plugins used in The Sleuth Kit. The graphical user interface displays the results from the forensic search of the underlying volume making it easier for investigators to flag pertinent sections of data. The tool is largely maintained by Basis Technology Corp. with the assistance of programmers from the community. The company sells support services and training for using the product.

References

  1. 1 2 "CAINE Live USB/DVD - computer forensics digital forensics". www.caine-live.net. Retrieved 2018-07-02.
  2. ↑ "History of the Project". www.caine-live.net. Retrieved 2020-01-29.
  3. ↑ James, Joshua I.; Gladyshev, Pavel (2013-09-01). "A survey of digital forensic investigator decision processes and measurement of decisions based on enhanced preview". Digital Investigation. 10 (2): 148–157. doi:10.1016/j.diin.2013.04.005. ISSN   1742-2876.
  4. ↑ Sean-Philip., Oriyano (2011). Hacker techniques, tools, and incident handling. Gregg, Michael. Sudbury, Mass.: Jones & Bartlett Learning. ISBN   978-0763791834. OCLC   702369433.
  5. ↑ "CAINE 8.0". TechRadar. Retrieved 2018-07-02.
  6. ↑ "CAINE Live USB/DVD". CAINE website. Archived from the original on 2008-10-29. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  7. ↑ Decusatis, Casimer; Carranza, Aparicio; Ngaide, Alassane; Zafar, Sundas; Landaez, Nestor (October 2015). "Methodology for an Open Digital Forensics Model Based on CAINE". 2015 IEEE International Conference on Computer and Information Technology; Ubiquitous Computing and Communications; Dependable, Autonomic and Secure Computing; Pervasive Intelligence and Computing. IEEE. pp. 935–940. doi:10.1109/cit/iucc/dasc/picom.2015.61. ISBN   9781509001545. S2CID   13397314.
  8. ↑ "CAINE Provides Sturdy Support for Forensic Specialists". www.linuxinsider.com. 14 November 2014. Retrieved 2018-07-02.
  9. ↑ Kerner, Sean Michael (7 November 2017). "CAINE 9.0 Linux Expands Computer Forensic Investigation Capabilities". eWeek.
  10. ↑ "Tactical Objectives and Challenges in Investigative Computer Forensics", Investigative Computer Forensics, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2013-04-11, pp. 157–166, doi:10.1002/9781118572115.ch6, ISBN   9781118572115
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.