OSForensics vs Plaso

OSForensics is digital investigation software for extracting and examining forensic data from computers. It searches and indexes files, looks inside documents and email archives, and attempts to recover deleted files. Hashing can verify evidence or compare it with known files, while extension checks can flag files whose extensions are incorrect. The software can surface recent activity such as opened documents, web history, connected USB devices, and network shares. Password tools target commonly used web browsers and can use rainbow tables to retrieve passwords from hashes. Investigators can group evidence into case files, cryptographically hash data, and export reports readable as HTML or PDF, with narratives and external reports. It can maintain a secure audit trail and create or restore disk images for analysis. OSForensics can also run from a portable USB drive. Listed evidence sources include Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS/macOS file systems, plus disk images, memory dumps, email, browser data, registry hives, SQLite, and ESE databases. Windows 7, 8, 10, and 11 are listed, as are several Windows Server versions. A free license and a 30-day trial are listed; subscription pricing is $95 per user per month.

Plaso is a Python-based engine for creating timelines used in digital forensic analysis. Its log2timeline tool extracts events from files, directories, storage-media images, or devices and stores them in a Plaso storage file. The psort tool can filter and sort that data and run automatic analysis. Other command-line tools include image_export, pinfo, and psteal. Documented inputs include Windows event logs and registry data, browser histories, SQLite databases, text logs, and cloud audit logs from AWS CloudTrail, Azure Activity, Google Cloud, and Microsoft 365. Plaso can create a CSV timeline from a storage image using psteal with dynamic output; listed formats also include JSON, JSON Lines, KML, TLN, XLSX, OpenSearch, and Timesketch. The framework supports additional parsers, analysis plug-ins, and scripts for forensic tasks. Documented analysis plug-ins include VirusTotal, NSRL server, and hash tagging. Plaso is free, with no commercial plan or usage limits stated. The project recommends packaged releases for general use and a version no older than six months.