X-Ways Forensics

X-Ways Forensics is an advanced work environment for computer forensic examiners. It runs under Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008. Compared to its competitors, X-Ways Forensics is more efficient, faster, not as resource-hungry, finds deleted files and search hits that the other will miss, and offers more features at a fraction of the cost! It is based on the WinHex hex and disk editor and part of an efficient workflow model where computer forensic examiners share data and collaborate with investigators that use X-Ways Investigator.

X-Ways Forensics has the following functionality:

• Disk cloning and imaging, even under DOS with X-Ways Replica (forensically sound)
• Examining the complete directory structure inside raw (.dd) image files, even spanned over several segments
• Native support for FAT, NTFS, Ext2/3/4, CDFS, UDF
• Built-in interpretation of RAID 0 and RAID 5 systems and dynamic disks
• Complete access to disks, RAIDs, and images more than 2 TB in size (more than 232 sectors)
• Viewing and dumping physical RAM and the virtual memory of running processes
• Various data recovery techniques and file carving
• File header signature database, based on flexible GREP notation
• Hard disk cleansing to produce forensically sterile media
• Gathering slack space, free space, inter-partition space, and generic text from drives and images
• File and directory catalog creation for all computer media
• Easy detection of and access to NTFS alternate data streams (ADS), even where other programs fail
• Mass hash calculation for files (CRC32, MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256,...)
• Unlike a competing product, does not depend exclusively on MD5 (collisions in MD5)
• Powerful physical and logical search capabilities for many search terms at the same time
• Recursive view of all existing and deleted files in all subdirectories
• Automatic coloring for the structure of FILE records in NTFS
• Bookmarks/annotations
• Bates-numbering files

X-Ways also does the following:

• Complete case management
• Automated activity logging (audit logs)
• Write protection to ensure data authenticity
• Remote analysis capability for drives in network can be added optionally (details)
• Additional support for the filesystems HFS, HFS+, ReiserFS, Reiser4, many variants of UFS1 and UFS2
• Supported partitioning types: Windows dynamic disks (both MBR and GPT style) and Apple supported in addition to MBR, GPT (GUID partitioning), and unpartitioned (Superfloppy)
• Ability to read and write evidence files (.e01 images), optionally with real encryption (256-bit AES, i.e. not mere “password protection”) and very flexible compression
• Ability to copy relevant files to evidence file containers, where they retain almost all their original file system metadata, as a means to selectively acquire data in the first place or to exchange selected files with investigators, prosecution, lawyers, etc.
• Shows owners of files and NTFS file permissions
• Gallery view for pictures
• Calendar view
• File preview, seamlessly integrated viewer component for 270+ file types
• Keeps track of which files were already viewed during the investigation
• Ability to examine e-mail extracted from Outlook (PST)**, Outlook Express (DBX), Mozilla (including Netscape and Thunderbird), AOL PFC, generic mailbox (mbox, Berkeley, BSD, Unix), Eudora, PocoMail, Barca, Opera, Forte Agent, The Bat!, Pegasus, PMMail, FoxMail, maildir folders (local copies)
• Automated file signature check
• Automated reports that can be imported and further processed by any other application that understands HTML, such as MS Word
• Ability to associate comments about files for inclusion in the report or for filtering
• Ability to tag files and add notable files to report tables
• Directory tree on the left, ability to explore and tag directories including all their subdirectories
• Synchronizing the sectors view with the file list and directory tree
• Powerful dynamic filters based on true file type, hash set category, timestamps, file size, comments, report tables...
• Ability to copy files off an image or a drive including their full path, including or excluding file slack, or file slack separately or only slack
• Compensation for NTFS compression effects and Ext2/Ext3 block allocation logic in file carving
• Automatic identification of encrypted MS Office and PDF documents
• Finds pictures embedded in documents (e.g. MS Office, PDF) automatically
• Skin color detection (e.g. a gallery view sorted by skin color percentage greatly accelerates a search for traces of child pornography)
• Ability to extract still pictures from video files in user-defined intervals, using MPlayer or Forensic Framer, to drastically reduce the amount of data when having to check to inappropriate or illegal content
• Internal viewer for Windows Registry files (all Windows versions); automated Registry report
• Viewer for Windows event log files, Windows shortcut (.lnk) files, Windows Prefetch files, $LogFile
• Extracts metadata and internal creation timestamps from various file types and allows to filter by that, e.g. MS Office, MDI, PDF, RTF, WRI, AOL PFC, ASF, WMV, WMA, MOV, AVI, WAV, MP4, 3GP, M4V, M4A, JPEG, THM, TIFF, GIF, PNG, GZ, ZIP, IE Cookies, SHD & SPL printer spool
• Lists the contents of archives directly in the directory browser, even in a recursive view
• Logical search, in all or selected files/directories only, following fragmented cluster chains, in compressed files, optionally decoding text in PDF, XML,...
• Powerful search hit listings with context preview, e.g. like “all search hits for the search terms A, B, and D in.doc and.ppt files below \Documents and Settings with last access date in 2004”
• Search and index in both Unicode and various code pages
• Highly flexible indexing algorithm, supporting solid compound words
• Logically combine search hits with an AND, fuzzy AND, + and - operators
• Ability to export search hits as HTML, highlighted within their context, with file metadata
• Detection of host-protected areas (HPA), a.k.a. ATA-protected areas
• Match files against the lightning-fast internal hash database
• Ability to import NSRL RDS 2.x, HashKeeper, and ILook hash sets
• Create your own hash sets
• Ability to decompress entire hiberfil.sys files and individual xpress chunks
• Reduced and simplified user interface available for investigators that are not forensic computing specialists, at half the price: X-Ways Investigator