USAGE

	F.L.A.G Forensic and Log Analysis GUI
	    http://pyflag.sourceforge.net

This document is an introduction on how to use flag.


Introduction to reports:

All flag functionality is provided by reports. A report is an object
responsible to performing one particular type of analysis. Examples of
reports are "View file timelines" and "TCPtrace". 

Each report belongs to a report family, example families are "Disk
Forensics" and "Log File Analysis". When you open flag in a web
browser, you will see the report families in a menu on the left of the
screen, clicking on a familiy will display the reports in that family.

A report provides a number of methods which are executed by the flag
framework, the main ones are, "form", "analysis" and "display". When
you first click on a report in the flag menu, the framework will run
the form method which is responsible for gathering any information
which is needed for that report (ie. parameters). When all parameters
have been provided by the user and the form is submitted, the
framework will execute the analysis method. This method is responsible
for doing any complex processing (if required) and caching the results
for display. The analysis report will be executed in a separate
execution thread, and the user will be notified of its progress. When
the analysis report completes, the framework will run the display
method which provides the results of the report for viewing by the
analyst. When a report has been executed, the framework will record
the event and the parameters used in the analysis. When this report is
requested again with the same parameters, the framework can skip the
analysis method and immediately display the cached results.

It is important to note that flag tries to provide a powerfull
data-mining analysis environment where reports are extensively
hyper-linked. ie. Quite often the analyst will jump from report to
report without ever encounering the form method, this is because the
hyperlinks provide all the parameters required for the report so the
framework will skip the form and go straight to the
analysis/display. In fact, some reports don't make a lot of sense to
be used directly from the main menu, for example a report might
require a TCP Session id, or a Disk Sector number. Usually these
reports are marked "hidden" and do not appear in the main menu.

Typical Usage:

There are two special families or reports, "Case Management" and "Load
Data". These provide reports to create new cases and upload your
evidence data. A typical flag session will proceed as follows:

Step 1: Create Case Database

Click on the "Case Management" report family
Click on the "Create New Case" report
Enter a name for your new case
Click Submit
Click the "Home" button in navbar at the top to return to the main menu

Step 2: Load Data

Click on the "Load Data" report family
Click on the appropriate report report to load your data source
	(tcpdump, partition dd image, log file etc)
Fill in the form, you will probably need to enter a name for the new
	data source and select a file from a list box. The files
	displayed in the list box come from UPLOADDIR variable in the
	conf.py config file (see README)
Click Submit to load the data
Click the "Home" button in the navbar to return to the main menu

Step 3: Start Working

Click on the report familiy appropriate to your data source. You will
see all the reports which are available to analyse that type to
data. Click on something of interest, and start to explore your
evidence!

More detailed usage instructions is available in the docs directory in
the pyflag manual.