Free DME & DFIR Resources

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year my friends!  Just a quick note to pass along season's greetings and give you a heads up regarding upcoming topics for my podcast, Nerds & Non/Sense™ .

In our January, 2020 episodes we'll be discussing The Illusion of Privacy.  Cambridge Analytica, "The Great Hack" documentary on Netflix, the Best Selling book "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" and chatting about how metadata about your daily activities is used to not only predict, but influence your behavior.  How you are the commodity, and most of you still don't even understand the extent to which you've facilitated this.

In our February, 2020 episodes we'll be discussing Work/Life Balance.  Mandatory professional therapy and mental health resources & evaluations for digital evidence practitioners, and how they should be mandated in ALL agency SOPs, IMHO.

Several other things I should be doing on a Saturday morning, but I find myself anxious to continue this discussion. Maybe it’s because although multiple industry Best Practice documents talk about correcting Aspect Ratio, none of them discuss the proper way to do it. It could also be my new coffee maker, which I'm hypothesizing has increased my caffeine intake substantially, although I have not increased my coffee intake. Who knows. Anyway, let’s start by recapping Part 1.

Less than two weeks away from the official launch, and I'm making some significant progress in what will be the new, secure member's area.  This area of Media-Geek.com will not be available to the general public, as its purpose is to provide a secure place for forensic media related professionals to share information.  Membership will be open to current or retired law enforcement forensic media related professionals and prosecutors.

The new members area will provide a number of "social networking" tools, such as secure community forums, file sharing, messaging tools, a community calendar, and more.  Members will be able to submit articles, news, event information, links, and other content to share with the group.  There will be a membership directory, and users can choose what information they'd like to provide (if any).  Members can create "Connections" or "buddy lists" and use Private Messaging (PM) to communicate with any member throughout the entire site. Want to receive an email or PM when there's a new post to a forum?  No problem.  Want an email when someone sends you a PM?  Can do.  Want to keep your email address private, yet allow members to send you an email?  We can do that too!

After more than 25 years the venerable VGA port is finally disappearing from computers, but the interface is proving tough to phase out completely and will linger for years in projectors, monitors and TV sets.

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Today Google launched Google Drive, a free-if-you-just-need-5GB-of-storage Dropbox-like service that lets you easily store and share files in the cloud.

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You know what they say – the old has gone, and the new has come. Mozilla has just announced that they will be retiring their Firefox 4 browser – strange, isn’t it, considering Firefox 4 shipped a mere three months ago. Well, at least Firefox 5 is now the de facto browser from Mozilla. Tuesday’s Firefox 5 release also saw Mozilla spell out the list of vulnerabilities it patched in that edition alongside 2010′s Firefox 3.6, although there was no mention of any bugs fixed in Firefox 4.

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As each day passes law enforcement and government agencies struggle with managing more sources of digital evidence and multimedia, like body worn cameras. The massive amounts of data storage required have led many to finally consider secure cloud-based storage solutions, but as some have found out, despite the minimal capital investment cloud storage costs can quickly exceed the LE & IT budgets of even the largest agencies. Let's break this down and talk specifically about digital evidence and archiving.

How are you archiving all of your digital evidence today? A tiered storage solution? Hybrid cloud solution? LTO tape? Hard drives? Optical discs (i.e. CD-R, DVD+/-R, BD-R)? Lots of questions and options, so lets talk specifically to the last group; those using optical discs.

Wow, who'd a thunk it. We're officially 400 strong..."and groooowing"! That would've been hilarious if you could hear me sing it. Well, maybe not. Anywho, a big thank you to everyone for their support and participation in the Media-Geek community so far!

A small investment of time and knowledge from a great many, typically far exceeds the value of a large investment of time and knowledge from a select few; some of you have already helped to prove that point here. On behalf of myself and all of the other members who have benefited from your contributions to our community, thank you! (I know, you would've preferred cash. No need to write in and tell me.)

Tomorrow's the official launch of Media-Geek.com and we've added another great feature to the new members area, a categorized events calendar.  The new calendar will be viewable by all visitors; however, only registered members will be able to add and manage events listed in the calendar.

The concept behind the calendar is simple - to provide a consolidated calendar listing the multitude of forensic related training events, conferences, and meetings.  The initial categories implemented include Photography Training, Image Processing & Analysis Training, Forensic Video Training, and Forensic Conferences & Meetings.

You can’t say that the SD Association isn’t keeping up with the times. A good seven months after the association revealed the UHS-I specifications, it’s back again with the UHS-II bus-interface system that promises high-definition recording speeds of up to 312MB/s, allowing professionals to consider an SDHC or SDXC-based camera instead of having to rely on CompactFlash or SSD drives.

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Secure your hotspot or face a fine is the gist behind Westchester, NY's countywide law requiring all commercial businesses to secure their WLAN access points. Various news articles indicate that the state of New York is considering similar legislation (See ZDNet article dated 1/9/2007). Westchester's concern is "On these networks, there's unfettered access to confidential data, and we have a problem with that." Personally, I have a problem with county taxpayers funding the task of enforcing such nonsense.

One of the tools many of us keep in the toolbox for recovering from CD/DVD was recently updated to support other types of media, to include removable drives and hard disks.  It's also added support for NTFS.  Not familiar with IsoBuster?  Check it out at www.isobuster.com

Or something like that. Listen, I play fair and expect you to do so too. You're grown adults, most of whom are in law enforcement and/or government, which in my personal opinion sets a higher bar for your behavior.

Downloading It All...So I Never Have to Pay You Again!
My terms don't prohibit it, so if you're a bit type A or even a complete ass, knock yourself out. Remember my terms of use though, the ones that have rarely changed. Share & Share Alike. You must prominently attribute DME Resources as your source.

I'm not going to write the entire damn terms out here or document the Creative Commons licensing you've agreed to. I'm fairly certain you can read and click the links. What I will say is that if you're building your own database and storing all the available files and information from here for it, you'd better be intimately familiar with your legal obligations.

Also, what the hell do you have against me making a living? A cup of Starbucks coffee each month is too much for 20 years of my time, knowledge & experience coupled with our collective knowledgebase? You see me as a greedy, arrogant ass? If so, do us both a favor and don't renew your subscription. I don't need more people like you in my life. Just sayin'.

Thanks for understanding, and good luck out there my friends.