Installing Autopsy 4.6.0 on linux

Thursday, June 07, 2018 Christian Kisutsa

Autopsy is a digital forensics tool that needs no introduction. It has a ton of capabilities such as registry analysis, email analysis, media analysis, android analysis etc. The fact that it's open source and is bundled with the ability to analyze android images is just super awesome.

I had previously tried to compile Autopsy for linux but i had little luck. I decided to try again with this version, that's packaged for linux. Here is how to go about it.

Update and install dependencies

apt-get update
apt-get install libafflib-dev libbfio-dev libc3p0-java libewf-dev libpostgresql-jdbc-java sleuthkit-java

Install and configure Java 8

Add Java repository and install the Java 8 installer

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer

Check for the Java version:

java -version
javac -version

Confirm the Java path

sudo update-alternatives --config java

Add path to environment

sudo nano /etc/environment
JAVA_HOME="/opt/jdk1.8.0_101"
export JAVA_HOME

Initialize environment:

source /etc/environment

Test Java HOME variable:

echo $JAVA_HOME

Download and setup Autopsy

Create working directory:

mkdir autopsy-4.6.0-linux
cd autopsy-4.6.0-linux/

Download Autopsy:

wget -nc -cq --show-progress https://github.com/sleuthkit/autopsy/releases/download/autopsy-4.6.0-linux1/sleuthkit-java_4.6.0-1_amd64.deb
wget -nc -cq --show-progress https://github.com/sleuthkit/autopsy/releases/download/autopsy-4.6.0-linux1/autopsy-4.6.0-linux1.zip

Extract sleuthkit and manual install:

dpkg -x sleuthkit-java_4.6.0-1_amd64.deb sleuthkit
sudo cp -r sleuthkit/usr/* /usr/

Extract Autopsy:

mkdir autopsy-4.6.0-linux
unzip autopsy-4.6.0-linux1.zip -d autopsy-4.6.0-linux

Configure Autopsy:

cd autopsy-4.6.0-linux/
chmod +x unix_setup.sh
./unix_setup.sh

Start autopsy:

cd bin/
./autopsy

If all goes well, you should get your nice and simple GUI, as shown below.

I will work on a follow up blog post, that will highlight how to create android images and analyze them using Autopsy.

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