Goin' commando

Cory had post a bit ago about using alternatives to commercial analysis suites when conducting an exam, and that got me to thinking...when I wrote WFA 2/e, one of the things I was acutely aware of was that some of the information would age pretty quickly; that is, from the time that I submitted the manuscript (early March) until the book was published (June), there would be a LOT of things that changed or improved, with new tools and new versions coming out. So something like a published book would be a good start, but it wouldn't be a great way to keep track of freely available tools that may be of use. Considering the fact that in most cases, folks don't even look for (or in some cases, write) tools until they actually need them, something online and easily edited (ForensicWiki) would be a better resource for tracking this sort of thing. The ForensicWiki would also be a great resource for not only providing information about tools (free or otherwise) for conducting analysis, but also for information on the format on the files being analyzed.

As a side note, I've found that over the past year or more, with the exception of PCI-specific searches, I've pretty much gone commando (i.e., sans dongle) on my exams, relying instead on specific, free tools...not because I have anything against the commercial stuff, but because the free tools fit the bill for what I needed. Does that make me a bad person?

Anyway, I think that is would be a great place to start throwing up information, discussion and links to free and open-source tools that folks are using for analyzing various files or formats. This can include general stuff (such as, does anyone have a good, free grep utility for Windows that doesn't use cygwin?)

For example, over on the ForensicFocus forums recently, there was a question regarding viewing information in MSI files. The original poster (OP) found that one of the recommended tools, InstEd, was extremely helpful for what he needed to do.

So, I'll be posting links to and comments about tools here, but I'd love to have folks send in comments or emails about tools they use that are free and/or open-source, and allow them to "go commando" on their exams. Please, no pictures! ;-)