How to Build a Home Lab to Learn Digital Forensics
If you're looking to break into digital forensics, hands-on experience is just as important as theoretical knowledge. A home lab allows you to practice real-world forensic techniques, experiment with industry-standard tools, and gain the confidence needed to analyze digital evidence effectively.
Whether you're a student, an IT professional transitioning into cybersecurity, or simply curious about forensic investigations, setting up a lab gives you a cost-effective way to develop the skills that employers look for.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to set up a home lab for digital forensics—using free tools and virtual machines—so you can start building practical experience right away.
Setting Up a Home Lab Environment
There are plenty of ways to build your home lab; however, we're going to go over the most reasonable and cost-effective way to accomplish it. You can use tools that are all open source, meaning you really don't have to invest any money buying all that lab gear.
The only investment that may be necessary is to have a computer with at least 12GB of RAM and an up-to-date i5 processor, if you don't already.
HyperVisor
To begin, you will need a hypervisor to host your VMs, such as Oracle VM VirtualBox or VMWare Workstation Player. If you don't mind dropping a little cash, you can go for VMWare Workstation Pro. Keep in mind, you cannot take snapshots of your VMs if you use VMWare Workstation Player (which is free).
VirtualBox is also free but will allow you to take snapshots. This is what I use, and I have never had any issues, so VirtualBox is my recommendation for a free hypervisor.
Virtual Machines
The next step to building a lab environment is acquiring the virtual machines needed to conduct your work. We recommend that you get a Windows 10 machine. These machines are developer versions of Edge, so they do have a limited lifespan. However, they are great for practicing the acquisition of Windows images and pulling volatile data from a Windows system. These can be found here:
You will also need a Linux VM from which you can conduct forensic tasks. We recommend the SIFT Workstation because it comes pre-loaded with various useful tools. This can be found here:
You can either load up the pre-built .ova that SANS provides or install it on top of an existing Ubuntu desktop. Instructions for both methods are provided in the link above.
Tools
In addition to the machines mentioned above, we encourage you to download and install a Skadi Server. This will significantly aid in the collection and analysis of volatile data on a system because it provides a collection executable (CyLR.exe) as well as a Kabana instance to analyze the data.
As far as the actual virtual machines go, the Windows 10 and Linux VM are all you will need to get started. However, you should set the VMs up so that they can communicate with each other. That way, you can acquire the required information from each VM without having to use your host as a middleman.
What Do You Gain From a Lab Environment?
The answer to this question is quite simple: you practice digital forensic techniques and gain the ability to speak intelligently about them through practical application.
We'll review some of the simpler techniques that can be practiced in a lab environment, as well as where to acquire files to analyze and what tools to use.
To start, you will want to learn the tools needed to conduct various digital forensic techniques. As stated previously, many tools have already been installed on the SIFT Workstation. However, some Windows tools can be used to extract information that is useful during an investigation.
What Techniques Can You Learn in a Lab?
As with any digital forensic investigation, you always need to know what data you are looking for prior to starting your analysis. This is typically determined by the client or principal and is often general in nature—for example: “I need to know if this person executed this program, opened this file, or changed a specific configuration.”
From that point, it will be up to you to determine where to look to provide them with the data that they need. As a forensics analyst, it is never your job to make a final decision; it is your job to present unbiased factual data. So, we're going to provide a few Windows artifacts, what information they can provide, and situations in which they can be of great value.
You can use the lab to change certain variables (such as installing an application, adding/removing/modifying a file, executing an application, etc.) and see how these artifacts change to provide you with accurate information.
What are Useful Windows Artifacts?
Windows artifacts are a key element to a digital forensics investigation that involves, well, a Windows system(s). Below are the most useful Windows artifacts to practice within your lab environment, along with a brief description:
Registry: Contains information that Windows continually references during operation, such as profiles, software and hardware configurations, and property sheets.
MFT (Master File Table): A database in which information about every file and directory on an NT File System (NTFS) volume is stored.
Shimcache: Used by the operating system to identify application compatibility issues.
Amcache.hve: A registry file that stores the information of executed applications.
Prefetch: Stores specific data about the applications you run in order to help them start faster.
Shell Bags: Helps track views, sizes, and positions of a folder window when viewed through Windows Explorer. This includes network folders and removable devices.
Shortcut (LNK) files: A file extension for a shortcut file used by Microsoft Windows to point to an executable file.
Browser cache: Temporary storage area on your computer or laptop for the files downloaded by your web browser to display sites.
Account usage (security logs and logon types): Records events as defined by the audit policies set on each object and how a user logs on or off of a device.
There is a lot more information that goes along with each of these artifacts, so we strongly encourage you to research these further and develop a strong understanding of them. All of these artifacts will be included within a full disk image of a host (i.e., using a tool such as FTK Imager, dd, or EnCase) to collect an image of the entire drive.
Final Thoughts
Analyzing the above artifacts and being able to speak to each one intelligently will provide an employer assurance that you know what to look for when conducting forensic analysis — and that you have put in the effort to learn on your own. Many employers understand that you may not have had the option to conduct investigations on a professional level.
It can be frustrating trying to get your foot in the door of digital forensics. But with a bit of perseverance and practice, you can build the right skill set and give yourself a fighting chance to land that first job.
Ready to learn more? Check out our Digital Forensics and Computer Examiner Online Training.
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