DIGITAL FORENSIC TOOLS FOR CYBERCRIME INVESTIGATION: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

The rise of cybercrime incidents has brought the digital forensic tools into limelight.Used as a form of response, these tools are used to dissect and understand what happened and how it happened.This is also used as a measure to counter occurrence of such activities again in the future.Over the past few decades, the digital forensic tools have become highly sophisticated catering to the various needs of the investigation team.Earlier these tools were used only as a means of recovering deleted files from hard disk drives.As of now, the storage medias have taken various forms and the evidence pertaining to cybercrimes is not limited only to the hard disk drive of the systems.Though there is no all-in-one tool that can handle all the processes of forensic investigation, the selection of the right tool for the purpose at hand makes the investigation process easier and legally valid.This paper attempts to study the most popular digital forensic tools in use to find out their scope and limitations.