Welcome to Our Blog
Welcome to the blog of the Elcomsoft Tool Evaluation Team! This semester, the LCDI has the honor of exploring and investigating the different tools Elcomsoft has to offer. Established in 1990, Elcomsoft is headquartered in Moscow, Russia and they focus on creating forensic toolkits for law enforcement, businesses, and individual users alike. These tools are vital in retrieving the contents of damaged or misplaced files. Elcomsoft’s tools are always under development so they stay up to date with modern technology.
The tools our team get to work with are all part of the Password Recovery Bundle. This comes with twenty-eight different tools which we’ll test over the course of the semester. These tools can recover passwords from programs ranging from Microsoft Office all the way to Facebook and Blackberrys. In other words, the main focus of the computer security programs are on password and system recovery software. The company offers a range of mobile and computer forensics tools, corporate security solutions, and tools for IT security audits.
Why Evaluate Elcomsoft?
Above all, we at the LCDI pride ourselves on creating credible evaluations and educational resources surrounding digital investigations. Our hope for this project is to provide an accurate and definitive assessment for the Elcomsoft tools we test that anyone can use. In terms of the field of digital forensics, it’s important investigators fully understand the capabilities and limitations of the tools they use. For instance, it can be difficult to look through a bunch of information and not know what’s important to look at. Knowing how effective a tool can be makes it easier for the user to implement said tool for practical use. This project will help to show if the tool can be user friendly depending on the level of knowledge someone may have.
Our Evaluation Process
So far, our team has spent two weeks researching the different tools we have access to. Each tool has benefits and features that make it unique. Fortunately for us, we were able to find videos on the Elcomsoft website that show how the tools operate. With all this information, our team can start testing and evaluating the tools.
In order to stay organized, we created a spreadsheet with all the tools listed and split them up into categories. This will make it easier for each of us to work on specific tools. Before we start evaluating, there will be a list of what the tool should be able to do. Once testing is completed, we’ll write an evaluation of how well the device performed the tasks and it’s user-friendliness. After that, we’ll give scores based on the above specified criteria on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the most functional/user friendly and 1 being the least functional/user friendly). Readers can see our evaluations and decide for themselves if they should search for other options.
Conclusion
Ultimately, our goal is to examine tools from Elcomsoft, a renowned software company specializing in utility applications for businesses and users as well as Windows productivity. We’ll test the tools and score them based on two criteria: functionality and user-friendliness. We’ll test a couple of tools and report on them in our next blog. This will include our scores and evaluations for the tools we’ve tested as well as any updates. We are eager to get started on this process and produce comprehensive results for the LCDI and Elcomsoft.
Be sure to check us out on Twitter @ChampForensics, Instagram @ChampForensics, and Facebook @ChamplainLCDI to keep up to date with our progress!