Certifications are Evil

Thought-provoking post from John McCash over at Mark McKinnon's blog:

"Folks, this is an opinion piece, and it's going to be a controversial one. Some of you started composing a scathing rebuttal to it as soon as you read the title. Normally I restrict myself to what I hope are useful technical tidbits, but like most of you out there, I'm a forensic practitioner, and I have little patience for time sinks which provide no benefit (no I'm not including the training in that category, save your flames for the end). I've always begrudged the time commitment (over and above what's required to actually take the training and learn the included material) required to attain certifications, despite which I'm in possession of five, soon to be six, not counting my master's degree, so I like to think I speak from some degree of experience..."

Read more, and the ensuing discussion, here.

Shrinking the gap: carving NTFS-compressed files

A new paper from Joachim Metz of Hoffmann Investigations titled "Shrinking the gap: carving NTFS-compressed files" is now available here. Readers may be interested to note that carving NTFS-compressed data will also be part of the advanced carving topic of the Hoffmann Forensic Sessions in November.

My thanks to Joachim for another excellent paper!