CAINE vs Hayabusa

CAINE is a free Italian GNU/Linux live distribution for digital forensics. It combines existing forensic programs as modules behind a graphical interface and is intended to support investigators through four investigation phases. The current listed download is CAINE 14.0 “LIGHTSTREAM,” dated 24/Mar/2025. That release sets block devices to read-only by default, while UnBlock can change the setting. rbfstab supports read-only mounting, and Mounter provides graphical mounting and unmounting. Included analysis utilities include Autopsy, FTK Imager, PhotoRec, TestDisk, hashcat, and memory-analysis scripts, alongside Windows incident-response tools such as Nirsoft utilities, WinAudit, FTK Imager, and USB Write Protector. CAINE supports disk imaging, memory and mobile forensics, and sources including raw/dd images, EnCase files, databases, internet histories, and Windows registries. Reports can be exported as raw/dd, EnCase, or text. The ISO is approximately 4000 MB, and third-party software keeps its own licenses.

Hayabusa is a free, open-source tool for Windows event log forensics and threat hunting. It processes EVTX logs from one host or thousands into CSV, JSON or JSONL timelines. Analysis features include computer and event ID metrics, logon summaries, keyword pivoting, HTML summary reports and MITRE ATT&CK mapping. It supports the Sigma specification, including v2 correlation rules; the project describes its curated detection rules as numbering over 4,000. The project says its multithreaded Rust implementation can deliver up to a 5x speed improvement and describes Rust as memory-safe. Hayabusa can run live on one system, process collected logs offline or hunt across endpoints through the Velociraptor Hayabusa artifact. Results can be imported into Elastic Stack, Timesketch and Timeline Explorer, while JSON can be analyzed with jq. Special Windows live-response packages bundle the program with encoded rules and configuration files to reduce files written to the system and help avoid antivirus false positives on YAML rule files. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, but no Linux ARM MUSL binary is provided because it does not run properly. The software uses AGPLv3; detection rules use DRL 1.1.