We have developed a program called fiwalk which produces detailed XML describing all of the partitions and files on a hard drive or disk image, as well as any extractable metadata from the document files themselves. We show how it is relatively simple to create automated disk forensic applications using a Python module we have written that reads fiwalk’s XML files. Finally, we present three applications using this system: a program to generate maps of disk images; an image redaction program; and a data transfer kiosk which uses forensic tools to allow the migration of data from portable storage devices without risk of infection from hostile software that the portable device may contain.
Simson L. Garfinkel