This unit explains antiforensics: tactics attackers use to erase, corrupt or disguise forensic artefacts and the defensive controls that reduce their effectiveness. It covers major technique categories, real-world analogies, safe lab commands, attacker workflows, defensive countermeasures, and ethical guidance for red/blue teams.
You already learned how to sneak a message into a JPEG (steganography) and how to sniff out those hidden crumbs (steganalysis). Now let’s talk about the rest of the magician’s act: convincing the audience there was never a rabbit in the hat.
In the last units we covered steganography and steganalysis (how to hide stuff inside innocuous files and how to detect it). Before that, we dissected access methods and privilege escalation, then persistence and EDR-aware tradecraft. Antiforensics sits between those worlds: it’s the toolkit and mi...
This is not “how to be evil” porn — it’s a lab for red teams and defenders. Understanding antiforensics helps you harden systems, design immutable logging, and anticipate how attackers will try to cover their tracks.
Quick map: Where antiforensics fits in the kill chain Initial access —> 2. Privilege escalation —> 3. Persistence —> 4. Antiforensics (covering tracks) —> 5. Exfil/cleanup If persistence is the sticky note an attacker leaves (“I’ll be back”), antiforensics is the eraser and the mise...
Big categories (and what they actually mean) Timestamp manipulation (timestomping) — changing file create/modify/access times so timelines lie. Log tampering & log tamper-evasion — editing, truncating, or selectively deleting logs, or disabling logging altogether. Secure deletion & da...
Table: Technique vs. difficulty vs. defenses Technique Detection difficulty (attacker view) Defensive controls that matter Timestomping Low–Medium Correlate logs from multiple sources, immutable time-stamped logging (SIEM, WORM) Log tampering Medium–High Remote immutable logging...
Real-world patterns and analogies (because metaphors are how brains work) Timestomping is like changing dates on a receipt to create an alibi. Log tampering is someone redacting CCTV footage with a black marker. Memory-only payloads are thieves who live in your house at night but leave no fin...
Examples & safe, ethical commands (for labs) Linux: change timestamps (benign demo) # set mtime/access time to Jan 1 2020 on evidence.txt touch -t 202001010000 evidence.txt Windows: examine Alternate Data Streams (ADS) { # Show ADS on Windows (PowerShell) Get-Item -Path C:\path\to\file ...
Typical antiforensics workflow (attacker POV — educational only) Pre-access reconnaissance: identify logging coverage, mount points, and backup schedules. Operate in memory where possible — minimize disk writes. Use encrypted containers or ADS to stash payloads quietly. After actions: wipe ...
Defensive counterplay (how to make antiforensics a lot less effective) Immutable, remote logging : send logs to a separate, write-once server (SIEM, WORM) with strong integrity checks. Endpoint detection with memory collection : EDR that snapshots memory on suspicious events reduces advantage o...
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