Another conference in the books for the year. Last week I was able to attend the Techno Security & Digital Forensics East event down in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It was my first time visiting the city having previously attended last year's event in Wilmington, North Carolina.
The Sessions
First and foremost, shout out to Alexis Brignoni and Heather Charpentier for allowing me to be the official third wheel in the LEAPPs workshop this year. Two of my favorites to present with! We got plenty of great feedback on the tools and especially on LAVA, which was teased last year and officially released right before the conference.
I hit a mixture of technical talks and case studies during the event.
Understanding iOS Photo & Media Artifacts
Scott Koenig walked through some updated info on Apple Photos, including plenty of paths to hunt for during your investigations.
Project Lost Apples - An AI Love (and Hate) Story
Josh Hickman talked about his journey through using A.I. to build out his script for parsing iOS FindMy and Bluetooth tags. Some times you have to correct the agents a bit to get the proper results.
Seeking Truth through Data: Honoring the Idaho Four
Heather and Jared Barnhart did a case study on their part of helping solve the Idaho Four murder from a few years ago. Sometimes the lack of evidence is even more telling than not.
How Long Matters: Digital Evidence, Timestamps, and the Karen Reed Case
Ian Whiffin discussed his testing and research he performed to help validate findings used in court. It was a super technical analysis through some iPhones for multiple people involved in the case. There are lots of evidence to look at through powerlogs, unified logs, and so much more that it's fully understood yet, which is why testing is so important that the evidence is properly parsed in our toolsets (both open source and commercial).
The Networking
Every night of the conference, there are vendor parties. The first evening had a party hosted by Magnet Forensics at a dueling pianos bar. Great music, and good times.
The second night there was a pizza party at a brewery hosted by the good folks at Monolith Forensics and Sumuri. You can never go wrong with pizza and beer (in my book).
I met a bunch of people, both old friends and new. It's always great to hear other people's perspectives since I don't work law enforcement.
The Swag
I had a pile of stickers and some 3D printed Gameboy cartridges to swap, and the return haul of coins was excellent.
Check out this slick Jad Software (Magnet Forensics) IEF dongle USB.
