This year’s Forensic 4:cast Awards were held on Tuesday July 7, 2015. The awards were hosted, as always, by SANS at their DFIR Summit. We are grateful for their hosting of the awards and for everyone’s participation. This year we had over 10,000 votes, that is the most we’ve ever had for a single year and almost more than all previous awards combined. I often wonder about the longevity of the awards, thinking that this might be the last year, but I continue to be surprised each and every year.
The event was amazing, yet again. The room was full of people eagerly awaiting the results.
Some of the categories were painfully close. IEF nudged out Eric Zimmerman’s Shellbags Explorer by a small margin but the two most fiercely contested battles were for Digital Forensic Book of the year and Digital Forensic Investigator of the year.
In the book category the voting was extremely close. Both “Art of Memory Forensics” and “Practical Mobile Forensics” were neck-and-neck going into the last week of voting. The leader was changing daily but, with only a few days to go there was a sudden surge in voting with the memory forensics book pulling into the lead and stretching that lead with only hours to spare.
Bob Elder took the title of investigator of the year by the skin of his teeth, beating out Sarah Edwards by only THREE VOTES! I’ve been informed from a reliable source that if you didn’t vote for Sarah you may wake up to find a sawn-off laptop screen lying in your bed.
If you’d like to watch the awards ceremony you can see it here: 2015 Awards
The finalists for each category is listed below. The winners are highlighted in red.
Computer Forensic Software of the Year
Autopsy
Shellbags Explorer
Internet Evidence Finder
Digital Forensic Blog of the Year
Hacking Exposed Computer Forensics Blog
Cheeky4n6Monkey
Windows IR
Phone Forensic Hardware of the Year
UFED Touch
Logicube CellXtract
XRY Tablet
Digital Forensic Book of the Year
Art of Memory Forensics
Forensic Examination of Windows-Supported File Systems
Practical Mobile Forensics
Computer Forensic Hardware of the Year
Atola Insight Forensics
Tableau TD2u
Tableau T3iu
Phone Forensic Software of the Year
UFED 4PC
Internet Evidence Finder
Mobiledit Camera Ballistics
Digital Forensic Organization of the Year
Teel Tech
Cellebrite
SANS
Digital Forensic Investigator of the Year
Sarah Edwards
Bob Elder
Alejandro Perez