This has been the biggest addition to the site since launch, and it's been quietly taking shape for a couple of months now. There's a new top-level section in the nav bar - Forensics - and it's a full suite of digital forensics tools that run entirely in your browser. No uploads, no server round-trip, nothing leaves your device. Everything from photo tamper detection to Windows registry hive parsing.
🔬 Introducing Forensics
The idea behind this section is the same one behind every calculator and tool on this site: give people a real, capable instrument for free, with zero tracking and zero data leaving their machine. Forensics analysis tools in particular tend to either be locked behind expensive commercial suites or require installing something on your machine - so I wanted a set that just works in a browser tab, entirely client-side, whether you're a student, a journalist doing source verification, or just curious what's actually inside a file.
Thirteen tools shipped, each one hand-built from scratch (parsers, entropy analysis, format decoders, the works) rather than wrapping an existing library:
Image
- Image Forensics - Error Level Analysis, noise/PCA/clone detection, JPEG ghost and double-compression checks, and full EXIF/GPS/ICC/IPTC metadata extraction.
Audio
- Audio Forensics - Waveform and spectrogram views, clipping and noise-floor checks, recompression sensitivity, and mains-hum (ENF) tracing.
Network
- PCAP Forensics - Packet list, TCP stream reassembly, HTTP/DNS dissection, TLS JA3 fingerprints, top talkers, and cleartext credential exposure.
Document
- PDF Forensics - Reconstructs a PDF's incremental-save revision history and inspects metadata, embedded JavaScript, and digital signature coverage.
- Office Document Forensics - Full VBA macro source, recovered tracked changes and comments, hidden sheets, and every external link a Word/Excel/PowerPoint file would contact.
Binary
- Binary Forensics - Magic-byte type detection, embedded file carving, byte-entropy visualization, and a byte-by-byte hex diff between two files.
- Archive Forensics - Inspects ZIP/TAR/GZIP/BZIP2/XZ/7z/RAR structure, catches zip-slip path traversal and compression bombs, and unpacks archives nested inside archives.
- Email Forensics - Rebuilds the Received-header delivery chain, checks SPF/DKIM/DMARC authentication, and flags phishing-style link mismatches.
Browser
- Browser Forensics - Rebuilds Chrome/Firefox browsing and download timelines and recovers deleted records straight out of freed database pages.
Video
- Video Forensics - Container structure, creation timestamps and encoder tags, per-frame Error Level Analysis, and a keyframe sweep for splice detection.
Executable
- Executable Forensics - Headers, per-section entropy, imports/exports, and Authenticode signature checks for PE, ELF, and Mach-O binaries.
System
- Registry Forensics - Walks a Windows hive's real key tree, decodes autoruns/USB history/UserAssist/ShellBags, and recovers deleted keys from free space.
Logs
- Log Forensics - Parses Windows EVTX plus syslog/auth.log, Apache/nginx, and IIS logs onto one unified timeline, and flags brute-force and log-tampering patterns.
Every one of these is a genuine indicator-surfacing tool, not a toy - but also not a verdict machine. Anomalies flagged by any single pass are a lead to investigate further, not proof of anything on their own.
🗂️ Catching Up on the Backlog
While auditing the archives for this post, I also found a handful of calculators and tools that quietly shipped over the last couple of months but never got their own callout. Consider this the usual "better late than never":
- Markdown Previewer - Convert Markdown to HTML and back in real time with a live preview.
- Password Strength & Entropy Auditor - Audit password strength with live entropy-bit calculation and crack-time estimates across hardware scales.
- Regex Tester - Test JavaScript regular expressions in real time with live match highlighting and capture-group breakdowns.
- RGB to HEX Converter - Convert RGB values to HEX color codes instantly.
- Unit Converter Hub - Convert between length, mass, temperature, area, and volume units with shareable, URL-addressable results.
- IPv4 Subnet Calculator - Calculate network addresses, broadcast addresses, usable host ranges, and CIDR masks.
- Daily Water Intake Calculator - Calculate your recommended daily water intake based on your weight and activity level.
I also went back through every link in the older posts on this blog while I was in there. A good number of them had rotted - pointing at slugs or categories that got reorganized since the post was written - so those are all fixed now, in this post and the earlier ones.
That's everything. Go poke at a file you're curious about.