Cory Altheide

First off I want to thank Harlan Carvey. In addition to serving as my coauthor and sounding board, he has been a good friend and colleague for many years. He has proven to be one of the most consistently knowledgeable and helpful individuals I have met in the field. Harlan, thanks again for adding your considerable expertise to the book and for never failing to buy me a beer every time I see you.

I also thank Ray Davidson for his work as technical editor. His early insights and commentary helped focus the book and made me target my subsequent writing on the intended audience.

Tremendous thanks go out to the “usual suspects” that make the open source forensics world the wonderful place it is. First, thank you to Wietse Venema and Dan Farmer for creating open source forensics with “The Coroner’s Toolkit.” Thanks to Brian Carrier for picking up where they left off and carrying the torch to this day. Simson Garfinkel, you have my gratitude for providing the invaluable resource that is the Digital Forensics Corpora. Special thanks to Eoghan Casey, who first encouraged me to share my knowledge with the community many years ago.

To my parents, Steve and Jeanine Altheide, thank you for buying my first Commodore-64 (and the second… and the third). Thanks to my brother Jeremy Altheide and the Old Heathen Brewing Company for producing some of the finest beers around… someday.

I express infinite gratitude to my incredible wife Jamie Altheide for her never-ending patience, love, and support during the research and writing of this book. Finally, I thank my daughters Winter and Lily for reminding me every day that I will never have all the answers, and that’s okay.

Harlan Carvey

I begin by thanking God for the many blessings He’s given me in my life, the first of which has been my family. I try to thank Him daily, but I find myself thinking that that’s not nearly enough. A man’s achievements are often not his alone, and in my heart, being able to write books like this is a gift and a blessing in many ways.

I thank my true love and the light of my life, Terri, and my stepdaughter, Kylie. Both of these wonderful ladies have put up with my antics yet again (intently staring off into space, scribbling in the air, and, of course, my excellent imitations taken from some of the movies we’ve seen), and I thank you both as much for your patience as for being there for me when I turned away from the keyboard. It can’t be easy to have a nerd like me in your life, but I do thank you both for the opportunity to “put pen to paper” and get all of this stuff out of my head. Yes, that was a John Byrne reference.

Finally, whenever you meet Cory, give him a thundering round of applause. This book was his idea, and he graciously asked me to assist. I, of course, jumped at the chance to work with him again. Thanks, Cory.