BitCurator includes multiple software tools that assist users with identifying, analyzing, appraising, and prioritizing important information in raw and forensically packaged disk images, and individual files. This includes file format identification, location of deleted files and files fragments, cryptographic hashing, and reporting on potentially private and personally identifying information.
BitCurator includes multiple tools to assist with extracting and exporting technical metadata from both disk images and individual files.
BitCurator includes bulk_extractor (and the bulk_extractor GUI, BEViewer) to assist users in finding potentially private and sensitive information. The bulk_extractor tool employs stream-based forensics (analyzing the disk image at the block level) to identify features such as email addresses, geolocation metadata, and credit card numbers.
Users can generate human-friendly BitCurator Forensic Reports using the data produced by Guymager, the Bulk Extractor Viewer, fiwalk, and Annotated Features report to explore born-digital materials completely (including hidden or partially deleted files and file fragments) with visualizations, XLSX transcriptions of file system metadata, high-level reports on file types, and overviews of features identified by bulk_extractor.
There are two ways to generate BitCurator Forensic Reports:
BitCurator provides some additional tools to assist in tasks common to many workflows, including duplicate file identification and deletion, and file export from disk images.
Nautilus is a popular GUI file manager for Linux and it functions similarly to Windows Explorer on Windows systems and Finder on Macs. One key feature of Nautilus is the ability to add custom functionality by incorporating user-created back-end scripts. These scripts work much like plug-ins for a web browser and extend Nautilus's basic functionality. A number of custom Nautilus scripts are included in the BitCurator Environment specifically geared to assist the digital archivist in pre-ingest data analysis. See below for specific instructions on how to use Nautilus to perform a number of critical data analysis tasks: