FOSS Tools You can Use to Secure Your Devices

A wide range of free and open source tools are available for use in digital forensics and to enhance cybersecurity. Here’s a quick look at some of them.

With the abundance of data stored online and an increase in hacking attempts, cybersecurity and information privacy are now of utmost importance. Cybersecurity integrates the techniques or practices that protect computer systems from stealing data through unauthorised access, while information privacy refers to the consent of individuals to allow personal and sensitive data to be used in compliant ways.

The wide range of security threats

Digital devices and gadgets are at the heart of modern life, but their prevalence makes them prime targets for an expanding range of cyber and physical threats. Malware remains one of the most common threats. This includes trojans, worms, ransomware, and adware. Ransomware has become notorious as a methodology for encrypting a victim’s data and demanding a payment in return for decrypting it, and can lead to significant financial losses and high operational stress. Spyware and keyloggers monitor and collect sensitive information like passwords and financial data by running autonomously in the background, often without users even knowing about them.

The other attacks address human weaknesses by sending fake emails and text messages or setting up counterfeit websites to lure users into downloading malware applications. These attacks are more convincing, as they target individuals or organisations. The techniques used facilitate account hijacking leading to unauthorised access to online services, financial accounts, or corporate networks.

The rising prevalence of Internet of Things (IoT) devices like smart home assistants, fitness trackers and connected appliances has added additional layers of vulnerability. Since most of these devices are run on a narrow range of security protocols, they become an easy target for a hacker. Compromised IoT devices can serve as a foothold into home or enterprise networks, or be wielded as instruments in large-scale botnet assaults, as in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

Another significant danger is unsecured public networks such as open Wi-Fi hotspots. These may not always employ secure connections or encrypt data, allowing attackers to utilise methods such as packet sniffing, man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks, or session hijacking to capture sensitive information transmitted over these networks. Even authorised applications running on users’ devices could be security chain bottlenecks if they are over privileged or have any code level vulnerabilities.

In the case of social engineering attacks, psychological manipulation is used to circumvent security measures. Attackers may impersonate as technical support or company staff to gain access to key systems. Supply chain attacks, in which attackers gain access to trusted third-party software or hardware, are a new threat vector that have the potential to take down entire ecosystems of devices.

There are also issues with respect to physical security. If well-designed devices use unencrypted or weak authentication, sensitive data can be leaked in case they are stolen or lost. Portable media devices such as USB drives, external hard drives and smartphones are vulnerable to such risks.

Attackers are now using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to make their attacks more sophisticated and scalable. For example, AI may be used to produce highly convincing phishing emails or to automate vulnerability detection.

All these risks require a holistic approach to security including deployment of multi-factor authentication (MFA), use of unique and strong passwords, the update of all software and firmware, encryption of sensitive data, etc. Defences at the network level such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and virtual private networks enable secure communication and access. Furthermore, since human error is one of the prime causes behind many security incidents, it is important to build cybersecurity awareness among users.

Static analysis tools

Dynamic analysis tools

Online APK scanners

Reverse engineering platforms

Free and open source tools for digital forensics and cybersecurity

There is growing interest in free and open source tools for data forensics as they customise and tailor features based on requirements. These tools allow smaller organisations, universities and independent researchers to conduct high-quality forensics analysis without steep licensing fees.

These free and open source tools are used in digital forensics to recover deleted files in storage devices. They help with recovering forensics evidence for computers, mobile devices, and networks that suffered a security breach. They are critical to detecting, analysing and documenting malware attacks, and identifying the origins and methods of cyber intrusions. Information extraction open source tools assist with metadata analysis, mining, sentient analysis, and automatic processing of vast datasets.

Besides, in the open source community, when people collaborate, new ideas and improved software flow continuously. Regular updates, community-contributed add-ons and a plethora of help communities ensure these tools are constantly on the cutting-edge. They are not only used in crime forensics and cybersecurity, but also by compliance auditors, fraud investigators, and even social scientists.

Free and open source tools are democratising access to the same powerful analytical capabilities that were once only available to those in resource-rich organisations. This means the gap between these institutions and smaller organisations is closing quickly, and thorough, competent, digital investigations are within everyone’s reach.

Here are a few important and popular open source tools used for cybersecurity and information extraction.

Wireshark

(https://www.wireshark.org/)

Wireshark is a powerful network protocol analyser that is deployed for capturing and analysing network traffic. This software provides a microscopic analysis of the network environment for investigating traffic.

Wireshark integrates deep inspection of hundreds of protocols, with more being added all the time. It supports both live capture and offline analysis, and presents a standard three-pane packet browser to aid intuitive navigation. It is cross-platform, running on Windows, Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and many other systems. Network data can be explored via a graphical user interface (GUI) or the TTY-mode TShark utility. It has some of the most advanced display filters in the industry and advanced VoIP analysis capabilities.

It supports a variety of capture file formats, such as tcpdump (libpcap), Pcap NG, Cisco Secure IDS iplog, Microsoft Network Monitor, and others. Besides, it decompresses a capture file that was compressed by gzip in real time. Depending on the platform, live data can be read through a multitude of network technologies: Ethernet, IEEE 802.11, PPP/HDLC, ATM, Bluetooth, USB, etc. It also supports protocols such as IPsec, ISAKMP, Kerberos, SNMPv3, SSL/TLS, WEP, and WPA/WPA2 for decryption. Users may apply colouring rules to the packet list for quick, intuitive analysis, and output can be exported to XML, PostScript, CSV, or plain text.

Nmap

(https://nmap.org/)

Nmap (Network Mapper) is a free and open source utility for network discovery and security auditing. It is used by many systems and network administrators for network inventory, service upgrade scheduling, and monitoring host or service uptime. Nmap uses raw IP packets in unique ways to determine what hosts are on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics. It was created for quickly scanning large networks but works well against single hosts too. Nmap is available for all major computer operating systems, with official binary packages available for Linux, Windows, and macOS X. It includes the classic command-line Nmap executable, but also has one advanced GUI and results viewer (Zenmap); a flexible data transfer, redirection, and debugging tool (Ncat); a utility for comparing scan results (Ndiff); and a packet generation and response analysis tool (Nping).

Autopsy

(https://www.autopsy.com/)

Autopsy is an open source digital forensics platform that provides a full suite of applications for investigating and analysing digital evidence. It is commonly used in forensics analysis of hard drives, smartphones, and other digital devices in the context of criminal investigation, security audit, and data recovery.

Autopsy has its own full forensics toolset: file system examination, keyword searching, timeline, and web artifact extraction. It can produce detailed data about deleted files, online activity and user behaviour, which helps investigators recreate events and find hidden evidence. It has a modular architecture and includes some strong reporting features for recording the results of an investigation as well.

Tools for analysis of Android apps

Let’s take a quick look at the key open source tools that can be used to perform the analysis and digital forensics of Android apps.

Digital forensics and information extraction tools foster community-driven development, as users and contributors actively improve features, patch vulnerabilities, and counter novel modes of cyberattacks. This collaborative ecosystem is the engine of innovation; new features, plugins, and enhancements are added every day, helping to meet the requirements of modern-day digital forensics. These tools also help fill gaps — not just of technical abilities but also of global knowledge-sharing, making best practices and cutting-edge techniques available to anyone with a laptop and an Internet connection, anywhere in the world.

These tools are critical to helping with the integrity, accuracy and legality of digital investigations in a world that is more saturated than ever with digital data and grappling with a privacy crisis in the making. Furthermore, they allow organisations to proactively protect their digital assets, detecting and mitigating threats before they escalate.

The importance of these open source tools will only increase as new attack vectors emerge. They are the foundation of digital forensics and cybersecurity architecture that will secure data, empower individuals, small organisations, and even large institutions to review evidence and, in many cases, help ensure that justice is served.