Digital Forensics Now

Send us Fan Mail
We come back from a busy conference stretch and go hands-on with new digital forensics tools that speed up real workflows across vehicle, iOS, and Android investigations. We also tour major updates to LEAPPs and LAVA, show how Batch LEAPP changes multi-extraction processing, and end with a hard question about validation that every examiner needs to take seriously. 

Show Notes:
North Loop Consulting: Sedgwick and NCL Spectator https://northloopconsulting.com/
Crush Digital Forensic Analysis Workbench: https://github.com/kalink0/crush-forensics
LEAPPS: leapps.org

Send us Fan Mail
 AI is becoming more common in digital forensics, but the biggest danger is people trusting it too much. Heather Barnhart discusses a framework that helps examiners assess when AI is appropriate, where it can assist with tasks like triage, and where it should not be used, while keeping trained human experts responsible for decisions. 
Notes:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/heather-barnhart-cellebrite_ai-dfir-digitalforensics-ugcPost-7463670252950847488-b7s-/

Send us Fan Mail
“The tool said” might be the fastest way to lose a jury. Recorded live at IACIS, we sit down with Stacy Eldridge and Becky Passmore of Parsing The Truth One Bite At A Time, two former FBI senior forensic examiners who build a true crime-ish podcast around one thing most shows ignore: the digital artifacts and the courtroom testimony that prove what happened.

https://parsingthetruth.com/

Send us Fan Mail
Tool output can look authoritative while still being dangerously easy to misread, and we’ve both seen how fast that goes sideways when a case hits court. Live from the MSAB Digital Summit 2026, we walk through a simple principle that saves careers: an artifact is a clue, not a conclusion. We talk about how “artifact worship” happens, how to build real corroboration, and why multiple records on the same phone are not automatically multiple lines of evidence.

We also get honest about forensic reporting and peer review. Assuming “legal will catch it” is a trap, because attorneys and supervisors may not be able to validate the technical meaning of a timestamp, a parser decision, or an attribution statement. We share practical ways to write clearer digital forensics reports, verify tool parsing, and test your assumptions so you’re not learning hard lessons under oath. If you work mobile device forensics, this section is for you.

From there we shift into training and deep technical skills that are quickly becoming baseline: Android RAM acquisition and analysis, what kinds of artifacts can show up in memory, and why RAM can hold evidence you may never find in a file system extraction. We also unpack protocol buffers (protobuf) and the uncertainty that comes with app data when the .proto schema is missing, plus why that matters when AI and automation start “helping” with interpretation. We wrap with an ALEAPP update, a reminder that a portable tool report isn’t analysis, and a quick look at how standards like Daubert and Frye raise the bar for methodology.

Notes:
Brett Shavers Blogs: 
It’s Not Artifact Worship When One Artifact Actually Changes the Case https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/its-artifact-worship-when-one-actually-changes-case-brett-shavers-nwi6c/
I Thought Legal Would Catch It. They didn’t. https://www.brettshavers.com/brett-s-blog/entry/i-thought-legal-would-catch-it-they-didnt
IACIS https://www.iacis.com/events/in-person/2026-orlando-training-conference/

Send us Fan Mail
A blue jay, a busted feeder, and a brand-new camera set the tone, but only briefly. 
We kick off the new year with updates from the Florida ICAC conference, including firsthand courtroom experience watching frame rate and frame count testimony in action. The episode centers on Frame Counts Galore, an open-source script for extracting and hashing every video frame, calculating true variable frame rates, and producing transparent, courtroom-ready logs and reports.
We cover upcoming DFIR conferences, introduce a lightweight AI Provenance Scanner for fast C2PA and metadata checks, and reflect on standout moments from the digital forensics year—especially the impact of open-source tools and honest conversations about the realities of the work. 
The episode closes with a 2026 wish list focused on stronger education, fair workloads, and customizable forensic reporting that analysts can actually defend in court.
Happy New Year to the DFIR community.

Notes:
Frame Counts Galore-
https://github.com/abrignoni/frame-counts-galore
Upcoming Conferences- 
https://www.iacis.com/                        
https://www.msab.com/digital-summit-2026/ 
https://magnetvirtualsummit.com/              
https://www.technosecurity.us/
https://ofta.cellebrite.com/event/cellebrite-c2c-user-summit-2026/
AI Provenance Scanner-  
https://github.com/abrignoni/AI_Provenance_Scanner
Brett Shavers Blogs-                                                    
https://www.brettshavers.com/
UFADE & ALEX-                                                              
https://github.com/prosch88