8 Best Digital Forensics Software Tools (2024 Compared)

A hand-picked list of the top open source forensic tools with features. Pick the best Digital Forensics Software as per your forensic needs for quick recovery and investigation of your digital devices:

Digital forensics is an activity that includes the preservation, identification, and extraction of data that can serve as evidence. This will need to be properly documented to aid case investigation. There are many forensic software online that can help you make this process very simple and easy.

Digital forensics software is a perfect tool that can investigate and examine your network and environment after a security incident to discover the root cause of the issue.

Various organizations and businesses can utilize these digital forensic tools to perform in-depth analysis of their IT infrastructure. This analysis assists in pinpointing the cause of security incidents, identifying vulnerabilities, and enhancing incident response processes.

Digital Forensics Market Trends and Selecting the Best Tool

It’s exciting to inform you that there are open-source forensic tools available online that you can download and use for various forensic tasks. These forensic analysis tools aggregate security information received from logs and use this information to detect the cause of a security incident.

When the cause of an incident has been determined, remediation of the vulnerability will follow, and steps to prevent such from happening again must be in place.

Who is this article for?

It is for those who want to become digital forensics analysts whose main function is to use cyber forensic tools to investigate and analyze digital data collected from logs on computers, networks, and digital devices.

Their aim or target is to identify, preserve, and present this evidence for legal actions or incident response.

How to choose the right Digital Forensics Software?

Consider the company’s specific needs when choosing the right digital forensic software. Every forensic case comes with its requirements, so there is a need to choose the correct digital forensics software that is in line with company goals and regulatory demands.

You can also online review the specific digital forensic tool that contains all the features needed to carry out a successful investigation.

List of the Best Digital Forensics Software

Check out this list of incredible software for forensic analysis:

1. Sleuth Kit
2. Magnet Axiom
3. ProDiscover
4. Velociraptor
5. Caine
6. X-Ways
7. SANS Sift-Workstation
8. FTK Forensic

Comparing the Top Forensic Analysis Tools

Detailed reviews:

#1) Sleuth Kit + Autopsy

Best for analyzing hard drives and smartphones. Law enforcement, military, and private examiners can use it to investigate a computer incident.

This open-source forensic tool comes in two. We have the Autopsy and Sleuth Kit. The Autopsy is a GUI or Windows-based desktop that is free and open source. It can analyze hard disk images and smartphones.

The Sleuth Kit is a forensic imaging software and a library with a collection of command lines that can be used for analyzing and recovering files from disk images. It can also analyze file systems.

Features:

• Easy-to-Use: Autopsy is easy to install with the available wizards that will guide you through every installation step.
• Extensible: Autopsy was designed to increase its capabilities and can be integrated with other third parties.
• Fast: Even though it may take hours to complete the analysis and search, when keywords are used the results will be faster, what can take hours can be done in minutes.
• Cost Effective: Both Autopsy and Sleuth Kit are open source. It does not cost you to use this digital forensic tool.
• It can analyze raw disks, AFF file systems, and disk images.
• It Supports the NTFS, FAT, ExFAT, UFS 1, UFS 2, EXT2FS, EXT3FS, Ext4, HFS, and YAFFS2 file systems.
• Sleuth Kit can be run on a Unix Operating system and Windows OS.

Why did we like this software?

It’s easy to use and configure.

What do we like?

• It’s very flexible to use for a variety of investigations because of its extensive analysis feature.
• You will enjoy its large community support because it’s an open-source software.
• It is widely supported because of its many features and educational benefits.

What we don’t like?

• Autopsy can have performance issues when handling large data sets.
• Even with the large community, there is a limitation to the Support you get for complex issues.

Our Review: It is one of the best open-source digital forensic software you can find online and it’s very easy to use with large community support.

#2) Magnet Axiom

Best for examiners to streamline their workflows and be able to cut deep so they can easily locate, recover, and collect evidence faster.

It’s a great tool for filtering important data that either the investigator or examiner needs to review so that evidence can be recovered and analyzed quickly.

Axiom will help examine digital evidence from mobile, cloud, and computer alongside third-party extractions all in one case file.

Features:

• Artifact-first Approach: It can easily help recover any deleted data and can analyze digital evidence from mobile, computer, cloud, and any other source in one case file. The full history of a file or artifact can be discovered so you can build your case and prove your intent for a forensic task.
• It can examine open-source and different user account data from cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, Google, and others.
• All in one step it can process digital images from data extraction which will lead to data recovery and case file building.
• The Magnet AI tool will help detect potential pictures of child abuse, drugs, and weapons.
• Ability to filter data by date and time ranges, specific artifacts, and keywords which are gateway to find evidence faster.
• It can perform automated decryption by using tokens and keychains from mobile devices.
• The Magnet ATLAS helps to generate real-time reports and help track digital evidence.

Why did we like this Software?

It is a digital forensic tool with in-depth and exceptional evidence-gathering, analysis, and reporting capabilities.

What do we like?

• It has a holistic approach that helps cover the entire investigative process.
• Its capabilities can offer an extensive search into Cloud Data and Mobile.
• Its user-friendly nature makes it easy for both seasoned investigators and newcomers to use.

What we don’t like?

• Aside from the trial version we have the premium version with more features that may not be available to the community.

Our Review: This digital forensic software can help you close cases quickly with in-depth extractions and powerful analytics of data.

#3) ProDiscover Forensic

Best for Public and Private organizations to solve digital crimes. It can be used for forensic investigation by capturing evidence from a computer and filtering and analyzing the evidence.

It offers these three products, ProDiscover Hub, ProDiscover Pro, and ProDiscover Academic. The ProDiscover Pro allows for running on a forensic workstation and connecting an evidence disk for analysis.

ProDiscover Hub can enable examiners or investigators to conduct forensic analysis on a central server by remotely connecting your forensic disk image to it.

ProDiscover Academic is the type of version designed for training and teaching purposes. In the academic lab, students can use it to develop deep expertise in digital forensic methods.

Features:

• It supports different operating systems like Windows, Mac, and Linux.
• It can conduct memory forensics.
• This digital forensic software analysis includes cloud, social media, Web, and email sources.
• This software can conduct in-depth forensic analysis using automated GUI and Scripting tools.
• It can easily identify hidden files, deleted files, and partitions.
• It has multilingual capabilities for text search.
• It has an easy-to-use and modern web interface.

Why did we like this software?

It was one of the first software that supported remote forensic capabilities. Investigators across more than 70 countries use this forensic software for investigating cybercrime situations.

What do we like?

• ProDiscover makes it easy for Computer Forensics.
• It has in-depth capabilities in cybercrime investigation.
• It Recognize, Eliminate, and Safeguard what matters to you.

What we don’t like?

• You must request a demo first before you can use the software.

Our Review: The scope of use and support for this tool is large, and this makes this tool one of the most used globally.

#4) Velociraptor

Best for organizations to dig deeper into all their endpoints. This digital forensic software can track an adversary in real-time.

Velociraptor is forensic computing software and incident response software that can enhance visibility into your enterprise endpoints.

It can help you collect digital forensic evidence simultaneously across your endpoints, with speed and precision.

It will help you hunt for suspicious activities using the library of forensic artifacts which can be customized to your specific threat-hunting needs.

It can continuously monitor endpoint events such as event logs, file modifications, and process execution. These events can be stored centrally for regular review and analysis.

Features:

• It will continuously collect endpoint events.
• It contains a Library of forensic artifacts.
• It allows Customization for threat-hunting.
• It has an indefinite central storage of events.
• It contains a powered Insight agent.
• The Investigations can be concluded in weeks rather than months.

Why did we like this Software?

Velociraptor is a powerful and flexible tool that can do things that you have never even imagined are possible.

What do we like?

• Velociraptor is an open-source endpoint monitoring, digital forensic, and cyber response platform that helps collect, hunt, and monitor in real time.

What we don’t like?

• Velociraptor will offer you different forensic capabilities which you may find limited in certain scenarios. When planning for an investigation or examination, you must understand its strengths and limitations.

Our Review: This is one of the great tools that can help you with real-time data about bad actors and can help capture all that is going on in your endpoints.

#5) CAINE (Computer Aided Investigative Environment)

Best for Italian open-source Ubuntu and Linux OS distribution for digital forensic investigations. It can integrate with other Windows, Linux, and Unix systems security tools. Digital forensic professionals, security researchers, incident responders, and institutions with forensic labs can use it.

CAINE is an open-source digital forensics software with a variety of tools that can be used for forensic analysis. It is a Ubuntu-based app with a graphical interface that can offer you a complete forensic environment and can be integrated into other software tools.

Features:

• It can provide automatic extraction of timelines from random access memory.
• It has a user-friendly interface and tools.
• You can customize its features and plug them into other software.
• It ensures that all block devices are in read-only mode.
• It will ensure that it guards all disks against accidental writing operations.
• It can unlock a disk if you want to write to it.
• It supports the digital investigator during the digital investigation.

Why do we like this Software?

It has a user-friendly GUI and an interoperable environment that supports the digital investigator during the four phases of the digital investigation.

What do we like?

• It’s open-source and free to use.

What we don’t like?

• This software contains many features and tools that make it complex and overwhelming for beginners. Mere navigating through the features and understanding their functionalities can be challenging.
• The interface looks outdated because it lacks modern aesthetics and does not have visually appealing interfaces.
• There can be performance issues because of its resource-intensive nature. You can experience performance issues if you are using an old system with poor or low-performance specifications.
• A novice may find it hard to understand the comprehensive documentation, as it will require time and effort to understand the features.
• When you are looking for solutions for some complex situations, there is limited community support when compared to other digital forensic tools.
• It majorly depended on Ubuntu and inherited all Ubuntu’s limitations and compatibility issues.

VOur Review: This is a very good tool that will provide you with all the benefits Ubuntu and Linux OS distribution can give. It’s one of the best open-source forensic tools online.

#6) X-Ways Forensics

Best for X-Ways Forensics is a comprehensive and advanced digital forensics software designed for forensic examiners that can be used for computer forensics, disk imaging, and evidence collection. It can be used by law enforcement, government agencies, and certain organizations.

X-Ways forensics provides a work environment for computer forensic examiners and investigators. This forensic tool supports disk cloning and disk imaging. This tool has the capability for collaboration between teams.

Features:

• It has the capability for disk cloning and disk imaging.
• It can read partitioning and file system structures inside raw image files, VDI, VHDX, ISO, VHD, and VMDK images.
• It can automatically identify lost or deleted partitions.
• It contains different data recovery techniques, lightning-fast, and powerful file carving.
• It has complete access to the logical memory of running processes.
• It has easy detection of and access to NTFS alternate data streams.
• It will create a file and directory catalog for all computer media
• It supports these types of file systems: FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT, TFAT, NTFS, and Ext2.
• It has complete access to images that are over 2 TB, disks, and RAIDs.
• It will cleanse the hard disk to produce forensically sterile media.

Why do we like this software?

X-Ways Forensics is known for its efficiency and speed. It performs forensic tasks faster when compared to other forensic tools.

What do we like?

Training, user manuals, and videos about installation are readily available.

What we don’t like?

• When compared to other forensic tools, it has extensive features and advanced capabilities that can overwhelm beginners.
• The User Interface is less appealing.
• The licensing cost for X-Ways Forensics can be high for some small organizations.
• X-Ways Forensics primarily runs on Windows but can also analyze non-Windows file systems like Mac and Linux OS, but the support is limited.
• Sometimes you will need to depend on some third-party online sources and online forums for technical support.

Our Review: It’s one of the best tools for disk cloning and disk imaging. If you want a digital forensic tool that supports collaboration, then this is the tool to acquire.

#7) SANS Investigative Forensic Toolkit Workstation (SIFT Workstation)

Best for incident responders helping them identify and protect against advanced threats. Due to the SIFT’s robust capabilities, it can analyze file systems and discover evidence and memory images more accurately. SIFT Workstation design is based on Ubuntu.

The SIFT Workstation is an open-source tool designed to carry out digital forensic investigations. It is an up-to-date software that is available for everyone to use and has advanced abilities for carrying out forensic tasks using various approaches.

Features:

• SIFT Workstation is a 64-bit base system.
• When compared to others, it has better memory utilization.
• The Digital Forensics and Incident Response package gets updated automatically and can easily be customized.
• It contains the newest forensic tools and techniques.
• There is cross-compatibility between Linux and Windows. Installing the software on Microsoft Windows using the Windows Subsystem for Linux.
• You can use the SIFT-CLI installer to install or upgrade a stand-alone system.
• There is an expanded filesystem support.

Why do we like this software?

SIFT Workstation is one of the best forensic tools out there that can give you what your investigation needs. It has a lot of collection of free and open-source incident response and forensic tools.

What do we like?

• It’s the type of cutting-edge tool you need for your forensic examination.
• It’s purely versatile to handle various forensic tasks.

What we don’t like?

• You need deep expertise to handle the command line interface.
• It needs regular updates and maintenance, so you need to be up to speed.
• It requires a certain level of forensic expertise before you can handle some areas of the tool.

Our Review: It’s one of the best open-source forensic tools that supports cross-compatibility between Linux and Windows. SIFT Workstation is one of the best cutting-edge tools around.

#8) FTK Forensic Toolkit

Best for public and private sector organizations. It can help you to quickly locate, collect, and analyze digital evidence.

FTK forensic toolkit will point examiners or investigators directly to the artifacts that matter most, which will help to streamline or narrow down the scope of their investigation and cut short the time it will take to close a case.

It displays all standards in digital forensics software used for repeatable, defensible full-disk image collection, processing, and review. Streamlining the forensic investigations will ensure faster location of key evidence and quick resolution of complex matters or cases.

Features:

• It’s very productive and easy. The graphical user interface design makes it easier for both experienced investigators and non-technical users to navigate through the features and quickly learn the needed skills.
• Find more important artifacts faster, thereby eliminating the long hours you will spend manually digging for the data types for your search. What FTK does is help categorize and display the most data artifacts that will support how to find important evidence faster.
• It will help filter and search your evidence faster because the evidence is processed and indexed up-front and no need to wait for the index searches to begin during the review session.

Why did we like this software?

FTK’s has a reliable and scalable engine that can help process and get more evidence for examiners quickly which will help them dig deeper into their data and solve cases faster.

What we like?

• The Multimedia Thumbnail review will help analyze the image and video case evidence.
• FTK Mobile Data Processing will help investigate mobile device evidence and review chat app data.
• Its ability to create custom Python scripts, decrypt files, recover and crack passwords helps to find the data that other tools cannot find

What we don’t like?

• It’s not free and you must request a demo first before you can use the software.
• The company does not reveal the price to the public.

Our Review: This is a very good tool with a graphical user interface that can help both experts and beginners in forensic investigation.

Factors to Consider when Selecting a Forensic Tool

There are various factors you will need to consider when selecting the right tool for your forensic task. Some of these factors are:

1. Purpose and Scope: The first thing you need to consider when selecting digital forensic tools is the purpose and scope of the forensic task. You need to ask some important questions like what is the type of incidence, what is the targeted devices, and what data needs to be searched and analyzed. Then the scale and frequency of the investigation need to be considered too, which will affect the amount of storage and processing power that will be needed.
2. Features and Functionality: One important thing you need to confirm is making sure that the forensic tool has all the features and functions that can solve the problem on the ground. It must be able to perform important functions like data acquisition, data extraction, data analysis, data visualization, data reporting, and data preservation. It must also support formats and standards like encryption, compression, hashing, metadata, and protocols.
3. Automation and Customization: You need to confirm that the software can enhance and improve the usability and efficiency of the tools. It must have a very good user interface, automation, customization, integration, and documentation to help with technical support.
4. Reliability and Accuracy: You need to confirm that the forensic tool you choose can give you consistent and accurate results.
5. Security and Compliance: You also need to confirm that the tool can protect the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of evidence during the forensic process. It should include encryption, authentication, authorization, logging, auditing, and more to ensure compliance with legal and best practices during forensic tasks.
6. Cost and Availability: Make sure that the software you select is within your budget and cost-effective. The tool must always be available and accessible all the time for usage.

Checklist for Choosing Digital Forensic Software

• What is the purpose of the forensic examination? Is it for a criminal investigation, civil litigation, or fraud investigation? The purpose of the forensic assignment is required so that you can know the type of forensic image software needed and the amount of information that will be needed.
• What are the features and functionalities that the forensic software offers? Is it software that can perform data acquisition, extraction, analysis, visualization, reporting, and preservation?
• Does the forensic analysis tool support the formats and standards you need for compression, hashing, metadata, and encryption?
• Is the forensic software customizable and can easily integrate with other software?
• Does it have detailed documentation that will guide users on the setup and use of the forensic software?
• Is 24-hour technical support available for customers?

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Digital forensics software is a very useful tool for law enforcement officers or investigators as it helps them apprehend criminals faster, it also assists both private and public firms to discover any major security breaches. This tool can be deployed in different ways but the focus is helping to detect and secure our environment.

Digital forensics tools are crucial when it comes to combating cybercrime, they are reliable, adaptable, and easy to use. The type of digital forensic software you choose can help determine the speed and accuracy of your investigations.

Research Process:

• Time is taken to research this article: 36 Hours
• Total Digital Forensics Software researched: 38
• Top tools shortlisted: 8