performing-cloud-forensics-investigation

Performing Cloud Forensics Investigation

When to Use

• When investigating a security breach in AWS, Azure, or GCP cloud environments
• For collecting volatile and non-volatile evidence from cloud infrastructure
• When tracing unauthorized access through cloud service API logs
• During incident response requiring preservation of cloud-based evidence
• For analyzing compromised virtual machines, containers, or serverless functions

Prerequisites

• Administrative access to the cloud account under investigation
• AWS CLI, Azure CLI, or gcloud CLI configured with appropriate permissions
• Understanding of cloud-native logging (CloudTrail, Activity Log, Audit Log)
• Forensic workstation with cloud SDKs installed
• Knowledge of IAM, networking, and compute services in target cloud
• Evidence preservation procedures for cloud environments

Workflow

Step 1: Preserve Cloud Evidence and Establish Scope

# === AWS Evidence Preservation ===
# Snapshot compromised EC2 instance volumes
INSTANCE_ID="i-0abc123def456789"
VOLUME_IDS=$(aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-ids $INSTANCE_ID \
   --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].BlockDeviceMappings[].Ebs.VolumeId' --output text)

for vol in $VOLUME_IDS; do
   aws ec2 create-snapshot --volume-id $vol \
      --description "Forensic snapshot - Case 2024-001 - $(date -u)" \
      --tag-specifications "ResourceType=snapshot,Tags=[{Key=Case,Value=2024-001},{Key=Evidence,Value=true}]"
done

# Capture instance metadata
aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-ids $INSTANCE_ID \
   > /cases/case-2024-001/cloud/instance_metadata.json

# Capture security group rules
aws ec2 describe-security-groups --group-ids $(aws ec2 describe-instances \
   --instance-ids $INSTANCE_ID --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].SecurityGroups[].GroupId' --output text) \
   > /cases/case-2024-001/cloud/security_groups.json

# Capture network interfaces
aws ec2 describe-network-interfaces --filters "Name=attachment.instance-id,Values=$INSTANCE_ID" \
   > /cases/case-2024-001/cloud/network_interfaces.json

# Isolate the instance (replace security group with forensic isolation SG)
aws ec2 modify-instance-attribute --instance-id $INSTANCE_ID \
   --groups sg-forensic-isolation

# === Azure Evidence Preservation ===
# Snapshot a compromised VM disk
az snapshot create --resource-group forensics-rg \
   --name "case-2024-001-osdisk-snapshot" \
   --source "/subscriptions/SUB_ID/resourceGroups/RG/providers/Microsoft.Compute/disks/vm-osdisk"

# === GCP Evidence Preservation ===
gcloud compute disks snapshot compromised-disk \
   --snapshot-names="case-2024-001-forensic" \
   --zone=us-central1-a