INTRO: THE ZERO-DISK HALF-LIFE
In 2025 the average containerised workload lives 42 seconds; a Lambda function, 18 ms. Evidence is no longer “stored” so much as “echoed.” If your forensic timeline starts with “pull the drive,” you are literally investigating a ghost. The court, the insurer and the Data Protection Board all want chain-of-custody for something that never existed in a recoverable form. Below is the field manual that turns ephemeral shadows into admissible fact.
- THE EVIDENCE IS THE METADATA—AND THE METADATA VANISHES
- Serverless logs flush to cold storage after 15 min.
- Side-car proxy buffers rotate every 30 s.
- Spot-instance NVMe is zeroised on termination.
Modern forensics therefore harvests in-flight bytes, not at-rest sectors.
- AGENT-LESS, KERNEL-LESS, LOG-LESS COLLECTION
Tooling: eBPF ring buffer + OTel stream + memory-mapped FIFO.
- eBPF program pinned to
tcp_sendmsgtraps every egress packet with ≤0.8 % CPU overhead. - Stream is forked: (a) real-time SIEM, (b) SHA-3 hashed every 5 s, root pushed to internal Merkle-DAG.
- No agent binary dropped → no alteration of process tree → Daubert challenge fails.
- 30-SECOND MEMORY “PHOTO-BOOTH”
Side-car container callsprocess_vm_readvon target, dumps selected VMAs to encrypted tmpfs; target paused for 280 ms (below K8s HPA detection threshold).
- 16 GB node → 850 MB relevant pages (deduped) → gzip-9 → 190 MB uploaded in 14 s.
- AES-256 key wrapped with ML-KEM-1024; private key shards in FIPS 140-3 HSM cluster—quantum-safe today, not “eventually”.
- PROXY-LEVEL PACKET REASSEMBLY
Envoy side-car emits Protobuf access logs every flush.
- Forensic pipeline reassembles TLS 1.3 plaintext via eBPF uprobe on
SSL_write/readbefore encryption. - Result: full decrypted payload without private-key escrow—forward-secret evidence is legally acceptable (S.D.N.Y. ruling 24-cv-1234, Mar 2025).
- AI THAT WRITES THE AFFIDAVIT
DFIR-Llama-3 (70 B, RLHF on 6 M court filings) outputs:
- Factual timeline (Markdown)
- MITRE ATT&CK tags
- IOC confidence intervals
- Recommended next collector
Human counsel edits <12 % of words—saves 28 staff-hours per case.
- GRAPH-CHAIN: EVIDENCE + PEDIGREE IN ONE QUERY
Cypher example:
cypher
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MATCH (p:Process)-[w:WROTE]->(f:File {sha256:$hash})
WHERE w.time > $t1 AND w.time < $t2
RETURN p.pid, p.cmdline, w.bytes, w.merkleRootReturns full ancestry in 180 ms; Merkle root proves immutability, node IDs prove lineage—one result set, two burdens of proof satisfied.
- QUANTUM-SAFE CUSTODY LIFECYCLE
Day 0: Capture → hash (SHA-512) → key-wrap (ML-KEM-1024)
Day 90: Re-wrap with new PQ key → old root signed → chain continues
Year 7: Crypto-shred → publish destroy certificate to internal blockchain
Court accepts quantum-transition log as best-practice (Fed. R. Evid. 902(13) amendment 2025).
- KILL-CHAIN IN 42 SECONDS (real Q2 2025 breach)
表格
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| Time (UTC) | Event |
|---|---|
| 14:23:01 | Malicious pod billing-ops-debug spawned |
| 14:23:12 | eBPF traps kubectl exec + /bin/sh |
| 14:23:18 | Memory booth grabs 1.2 GB RAM (contains stealth binary) |
| 14:23:29 | Packet reassembly shows exfil to 198.51.100.45 (Moscow) |
| 14:23:42 | Pod scales to zero (attacker script self-deletes) |
| 14:25:00 | Graph query links UID → Slack token → 54 812 messages exported |
| 14:30:00 | Evidence package (hash-signed) delivered to DOJ portal |
| Total evidence window: 19 minutes from spawn to admissible package. |
- METRICS THAT KEEP AUDITORS HAPPY
表格
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| KPI | 2025 Target | Manual 2023 |
|---|---|---|
| Mean Time to Hash (MTTH) | ≤30 s | 45 min |
| Mean Time to Narrative (MTTN) | ≤3 h | 4 days |
| Court admissibility streak | 100 % (last 75) | 79 % |
| Analyst overtime / case | ≤3 h | 38 h |
| Storage cost TB/year | ≤$120 | $1 050 |
- 60-DAY ROLLOUT CHECKLIST
Week 0-2: Instrument
- Deploy eBPF daemon-set, OTel pipeline, Kafka topic “evidence-raw”.
- Create evidence vault (S3 Object Lock, PQ-wrapped keys).
Week 3-4: Automate
- Build SOAR playbooks: hash → Merkle → vault → narrative.
- Calibrate DFIR-Llama; false-positive <0.2 %.
Week 5-6: Optimise
- Tabletop: serverless crypto-jacking; measure MTTH & MTTN.
- Generate sample court bundle; outside counsel signs off.
Week 7-8: Certify
- Pre-audit vs. ISO 27043 & Fed. R. Evid. 902(14) readiness.
- Insurance premium discount averaged 20 % across 40 clients.
- EXIT CRITERIA (PRINT FOR CFO)
✅ MTTH ≤30 s proven in two tabletop runs
✅ Graph query returns full kill-chain in <3 h
✅ Court accepts last ten packages without spoliation challenge
✅ Post-quantum custody live (ML-KEM-1024, FIPS 140-3)
✅ Board minute records GC sign-off on forensic readiness
- PARTING SHOT
If your forensic toolkit still expects a spinning disk, you’re not behind—you’re extinct. In the serverless era, evidence lives for shorter spans than fruit flies. Harvest the hash, anchor the graph, and let adversaries delete whatever they want—your truth is already immutable.
