ISA Digital Forensics & Investigation 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which forensic tool is widely used for creating forensic images and analyzing disk evidence?
- Nessus
- FTK (Forensic Toolkit) (Correct answer)
- Metasploit
- Wireshark
Correct answer: FTK (Forensic Toolkit)
FTK (Forensic Toolkit) by AccessData is a widely used digital forensics platform for disk imaging, file analysis, and evidence processing.
Question 2: In memory forensics, what does the term 'process injection' indicate?
- A legitimate OS process updating its configuration
- Malicious code running within the address space of another process (Correct answer)
- A forensic tool loading analysis modules into memory
- Encrypted malware stored in the page file
Correct answer: Malicious code running within the address space of another process
Process injection is a technique where malicious code is inserted into the memory space of a legitimate running process to evade detection.
Question 3: What is a 'dead box' forensic investigation?
- Forensic analysis of a powered-off or powered-down system (Correct answer)
- Investigation of a network device with no active connections
- Analysis of encrypted files with no known key
- Examination of a system after its logs have been deleted
Correct answer: Forensic analysis of a powered-off or powered-down system
Dead box forensics involves examining a system that is powered off, typically by imaging the hard drive and analyzing it offline, avoiding changes to the live system.
Question 4: Which file system artifact is most useful for reconstructing a timeline of file activity on a Windows system?
- The $MFT (Master File Table) (Correct answer)
- The Windows Registry hive files
- The pagefile.sys
- The hiberfil.sys
Correct answer: The $MFT (Master File Table)
The $MFT on NTFS file systems records metadata for every file including creation, modification, and access timestamps, making it essential for timeline reconstruction.
Question 5: What is 'file carving' in digital forensics?
- Extracting embedded files from encrypted containers
- Recovering files based on file headers and footers without file system metadata (Correct answer)
- Splitting large evidence files for easier analysis
- Digitally signing evidence files for integrity
Correct answer: Recovering files based on file headers and footers without file system metadata
File carving recovers files from raw data by identifying known file signatures (headers/footers), even when file system metadata has been deleted or corrupted.
Question 6: When analyzing Windows Event Logs for forensic purposes, which log primarily contains security-related events such as logon attempts?
- System.evtx
- Security.evtx (Correct answer)
- Application.evtx
- Setup.evtx
Correct answer: Security.evtx
The Security.evtx log records security-related events including successful and failed logon attempts, account management changes, and privilege use.
Question 7: In network forensics, which tool is best suited for capturing and analyzing full packet data?
- Splunk
- Wireshark / tcpdump (Correct answer)
- Nmap
- Snort
Correct answer: Wireshark / tcpdump
Wireshark and tcpdump are packet capture tools that record full network packet data, enabling detailed analysis of network communications during an investigation.
Which forensic tool is widely used for creating forensic images and analyzing disk evidence?