14 DAY TRIAL // DEFT, a Linux distribution based on Linux kernel 3.x and the DART (Digital Advanced Response Toolkit) with the best freeware Computer Forensic tools, is now at version 8.1.
DEFT stands for Digital Evidence & Forensic Toolkit and is based on Lubuntu. It's a set of tools used by law enforcement agencies during computer forensic investigations.
“Computer Forensics software must be able to ensure the integrity of file structures and metadata on the system being investigated in order to provide an accurate analysis. It also needs to reliably analyze the system being investigated without altering, deleting, overwriting or otherwise changing data,” reads the official website.
This means that it has to have a number of important features. DEFT does not use the swap partitions on the system being analyzed, during the system startup there are no automatic mount scripts, there are no automated systems for any activity during the analysis of evidence, and all the mass storage and network traffic acquisition tools do not alter the data being acquired.
All these conditions must be fulfilled because the obtained data must be presented in a court of law and it must stand to rigorous testing.
A number of aspects of this Linux distribution have been improved with the latest release. For example, the disk mount’s status is now shows in the file manager, full support for Bitlocker encrypted disks has been implemented, Sleuthkit has been updated to version 4.1.3, Digital Forensics Framework has been upgraded to version 1.3, and full support for Android and iOS 7.1 logical acquisitions has been implemented.
Also, the JD GUI has been added, Skype Extractor (a forensic software utility for reading and extracting information from the Skype Internet telephone software user data files) has been upgraded to version 0.1.8.8, Maltego 3.4 Tungsten has been implemented, a new version of the OSINT browser has been added, a bug in the /etc/apt/sources.list has been fixed, and full suite updates of the deft packages and DART 2 software and tools have been implemented.
DEFT 8.1 is not the only operating system dedicated to forensic investigations, but it's certainly the best you can find. And, to top it all off, it's completely free, the developers work hard to improve it, and the applications integrated in the OS are among the best.
More details about this release are available in the official changelog. You can download DEFT Linux 8.1 right now from Softpedia.