When making the decision to co-author this book, I was well aware of the impact it was going to have on my life, but did not fully realize all of the others that would be directly or indirectly involved. Luckily, I have this section to show my appreciation.

I must first thank my family and friends for being so understanding on those many nights and weekends where I was M.I.A. Specifically…thanks to my dad for editing Chapter 2, even though “the Linux stuff was kind of way over my head,” and to my mom for always trying to convince me that I am way smarter than I actually am. Thank you to my brother, Danny, for caring for my dog when I was unable to. Jill, thank you for your encouragement throughout the entire process, especially when it involved cupcakes filled with cookie dough. An additional thank you to my friends for convincing me to take occasional breaks to eat sushi and play darts.

To Dr. Marcus Rogers and Purdue's Cyber Forensics program: thank you for helping me prepare for a career in this field and to continue to advise me on professional decisions.

I also owe a great deal of gratitude to the viaForensics folks, mainly for putting up with Andrew and my constant talk of the “wordcount meter.” Big thanks to Ted for his ability to concatenate my iPhone simulator photos, Catherine for letting me vent on a daily basis, and Chris for forcing me to invent new ways of analyzing the iPhone, even when I laughed at him and said, “there is NO WAY we can recover those videos!”

This book would not have been completed without the help of my co-author, Andrew Hoog, who has taught me that everything can and should be done using command line (even if there is a GUI that can do it 10 times faster).