Digital Forensic Examination and Cyber Security Laws

The provided assignment details the importance of digital forensic examination in safeguarding against unethical hacking and unlawful activities. It highlights various laws and regulations enacted by judicial bodies to monitor digital forensic investigation activities. The document also touches on corporate shields, police and justice acts, and intellectual property laws, providing a comprehensive overview of cyber security laws and their relevance to digital forensics.

CYBER SECURITY

Table of Contents
1) Personal responsibilities to be undertaken by an individual to avoid being a victim of
technical vulnerabilities of cyber security..............................................................................1
2) A comparison table for host based IDS and network based IDS.......................................1
3) Commonly used practices by social engineers to prey on their targets.............................2
4) Five examples of Zero day attacks.....................................................................................2
5) Tools for completing investigation procedure in a leading Bank in UK...........................3
6) Examples of forensic tools.................................................................................................4
7) 2017's cyber attack on Equifax..........................................................................................4
8) Impact of vulnerabilities on web application.....................................................................5
9) Distinction between tools for ethical hackers and hacking tools.......................................5
10) Laws that affect digital forensic examination..................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

1) Personal responsibilities to be undertaken by an individual to avoid being a victim of
technical vulnerabilities of cyber security
With a view of protecting self from the threats of cyber crime, an individual must
undertake certain responsibilities, which are listed in detail as follows: An unique password: An individual must protect ensure an unique password, so that no
one can guess and hack the account of that person. A password or lock system has been
considered as the most essential activity to be taken into consideration by each and every
person, in order to avoid cyber crimes (Glantz and Bass, 2014). Different passwords: Different passwords must be set for multiple accounts, this would
enable a personnel to reduce the risks involved in cyber security. Installation of an app: Before installation of any app, an individual must take into
consideration that the publisher of that particular app is authorised or not. Also, he/ she
must carefully read the permissions before installing any app on the device.
 A secured website: Access to an unsecured website, may lead an individual towards the
vulnerabilities of cyber security. Thus, with a view of avoiding the same, a secured
website must be accessed by an individual.
2) A comparison table for host based IDS and network based IDS
An intrusion detection system, is a system that operates in order to inspect the fishy
activities and generate alerts for an individual in case of such activities. Also, an IDS has the
authority to take action against such suspicious activities (Buczak and Guven, 2016). IDS is
categorised into two parts or groups, depending on the location, a brief distinction between the
two has been represented as follows: Host-based IDS: A host IDS is capable of detecting threats that are prevailing in its host
places, i.e. that are occurring within its range of functioning. In other words, it cannot
detect or take action against unlawful activities prevailing in other parts or networks.
 Network-based IDS: An intrusion detection system, which are capable of detecting or
identifying attacks from any network or hosts or place is recognised as network-based
IDS. In general terms, this system ensures dealing with attacks prevailing in any part and
1

take action against it. There are two types of Network-based IDS system, namely,
statistical anomaly IDS and pattern matching IDS.
3) Commonly used practices by social engineers to prey on their targets
Social engineering attacks are those threats which are created from personnel within the
range of an individuals that has suffered from this attack. They carry valuable data of a company
or organization to some other sources or personnel. In general terms, it is an art collecting
valuable information from an individual or venture, by using manipulative techniques. The
common traits used by a social engineer with a view of collecting information are explained in
detail as below: Manipulative tactics: The very first personality trait to be used in this context by an
individual is to be manipulative enough in order to achieve its target of generation of
more and more valuable information from another person or company.
 Trust relationship: A trust factor generated between two parties, enables sharing
information from one individual to another, thus, a trust relationship built with a person,
ensures social engineers to collect relevant and confidential information (Liu and Liu,
2015).
These are the common personal traits that can be used by social engineers, with a view of
achieving their targets of collecting relevant, confidential and important inmformat5ion by an
individual person or an organization.
4) Five examples of Zero day attacks
Zero day is a kind of vulnerability that may be faced by an individual, which requires
zero day, i.e. not a single day to attack the personnel and their information. There are various
zero day attacks that have been registered, some of its examples are listed below along with their
details: Sony zero day attack: Sony pictures entertainment became a victim of zero day attack in
the year 2014. It was the worst zero attack that have been registered or faced by a
company in corporate history. The aim of this attack was to block profit making paths of
Sony, rather than hacking information.
2

 DNC hack: During this attack, which was recognised recently, valuable information was
revealed about the Democratic National Committee. It was a result of continuous six zero
attacks that resulted in stealing relevant and valuable information of the company. Windows attack: This attack was registered in recent month of May ,where the security
engineer of Google revealed that zero day attacks are prevailing with respect to releases
of Windows OS (Gordon and Zhou, 2015). Java: In the month of March, emergency situations were announced in Java, in order to
recognise two vulnerabilities, which resulted ion hacking information through a zero day
attack system.
 Elder wood project: In the year 2012, elder wood project realised an unlimited number
of zero day attacks on its supply chain management system, which deals with achieving
its target audience. The report states the information was hacked by a criminal
organisation which can be supported by a country or a state.
5) Tools for completing investigation procedure in a leading Bank in UK
As a digital forensic investigator appointed in Lloyd's Banking Group of UK, an
individual is required to make use of several effective tools in order to undertake its investigating
activities. A list of tools that can be used by an investigator are presented as follows:
 A proper method or procedure of investigation must be adopted by the investigators.
 An effective evidence must be taken into consideration by the appointed investigator,
with reference to the information that has been generated during investigation procedure.
 Further information of facts must to be collected in order to provide authenticity for the
generated facts.
 The other employees who are subjected to the investigation procedure, must be informed
accordingly.
 A maintenance of record for valuable information generated from effective investigation
sessions, must be considered by investigators.
3

 Accordingly, an investigating report must be prepared, with all the necessary
documentation procedures and only accountable as well as confidential people must be
informed about the facts included in this report.
6) Examples of forensic tools Internet forensic tools: Internet forensic tools are related to the evidences that consists of
collecting, analysing and identifying of information generated. The various tools that can
be used for internet forensic activities are log files, history files, cookies, cached content
and many such tools (Ball, 2017). Network forensic tools: There are various tools available for undertaking network
forensic information generation, which includes, NetDetector, NetIntercept, OmniPeek
and Xplico. File carving tools: File carving analysis method is used to regenerate information from
the computer files, in absence of any file system data availability. The four major tools of
file carving are bulk extractor, EVTXtract, Foremost and Scalpel.
 Database forensic tool: It is recognised as one of the fundamental form of network used
to generate relevant information. Basic tools that can be used in the context of database
forensic investigation includes, tracking footprints, actions performed on a computer,
credit card information of customers, etc.
7) 2017's cyber attack on Equifax
Equifax is a credit monitoring agency operating in us, which carrier personal data
relating to millions of customers in US. In the year 2017, a cyber crime attacked this agency and
leaked information of about 143 millions of US customers registered with this agency. It was
recognised as one of the biggest as well as worst threat for the personal information of many
American personnel. It was reported that the hackers were collecting information from mid May
to July by exploiting weak points in website software of the company. The hackers got a detailed
information about the names,. Birth dates and customers. More than 209000 customer's credit
card number got hacked and the personal disputes information documents of 1,82,000 people
were leaked to these criminals. Equifax, then started improving its cyber security cell after the
two major theft attacks possessed by the company, in order to regain confidentiality factor on the
part of customers (Cyber attack on Equifax, 2017).
4

8) Impact of vulnerabilities on web application
The vulnerabilities that were created in the year 2017, had a long lasting impact on the
web application to be generated for that company. A web application is a system or program that
makes use of browsers and web technologies to perform activities for a venture on internet. The
impact of two vulnerabilities on its web application are listed in detail as follows: Wannacry: This attack started during May, 2017 and affected more than 3,00,000
computer systems installed in more than 150 countries and hacked information. It was
considered as the biggest Ransomware attack that was ever faced by the universe. The
web application for the firms got adversely affected, as it lost its credibility factor in the
minds of its customers.
 Petya: This kind of online threat affected large number of companies across different
countries in the world. It largely affected the web application mechanism of several
number of banks and firms operating in the nations of Russia, Ukraine, Spain, Britain,
France, India and many more (Ben-Asher and Gonzalez, 2015).
9) Distinction between tools for ethical hackers and hacking tools
The term ethical hacking refers to a method or an approach adopted by an organisation or
an individual to determine the ambiguities lacked with information system operating in that firm.
The tools used for ethical hacking is same as the tools used in order to hack information by
others. The major difference that lies with ethical hacking and hacking is that, ethical type of
hacking is adopted in order to safeguard any risks or threats prevailing in the market against
unethical hacking, while, hacking, in general terms, is recognised as an activity undertaken with
a view of stealing information and harming that person or firm (Bates and Moyer, 2015).
10) Laws that affect digital forensic examination
There are several laws or rules enacted by judicial bodies of concerned economies, in
order to undertake digital forensic examination activities, with a view of providing protection
against any unlawful activities, in the context of same. Major three are listed as follows: Constitutional laws: It is formal statement that is issued by constitution of USA, in order
to monitor activities of digital forensic investigation.
5

 Legislated privacy regulations: Legislative procedures are listed, which are to be
followed in the context of adopting an effective forensic digitalisation. Working beneath the corporate shield: As per this law enacted, digital forensic
investigators are authorised to work under a corporate only. Police and justice act, 2006: As per this act, the UK government has created legal
provisions for those who are found guilty of performing any unlawful activity in the
context of computer systems.
 Intellectual property act, 2014: The purpose of this law enacted in the year 2014 was to
update the law of copyright, with a view of avoiding any such unlawful activities.
6

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Ball, K. M., 2017. African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection.
International Legal Materials. 56(1). pp.164-192.
Bates, A. M. and Moyer, T., 2015, August. Trustworthy Whole-System Provenance for the
Linux Kernel. In USENIX Security Symposium (pp. 319-334).
Ben-Asher, N. and Gonzalez, C., 2015. Effects of cyber security knowledge on attack detection.
Computers in Human Behavior. 48. pp.51-61.
Buczak, A. L. and Guven, E., 2016. A survey of data mining and machine learning methods for
cyber security intrusion detection. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials. 18(2).
pp.1153-1176.
Glantz, C. S. and Bass, R. B., 2014. Lessons Learned in Over a Decade of Technical Support for
US Nuclear Cyber Security Programmes. In International Conference on Nuclear Security:
Enhancing Global Efforts. Proceedings of the Interational Conference.
Gordon, L. A. and Zhou, L., 2015. Externalities and the magnitude of cyber security
underinvestment by private sector firms: a modification of the Gordon-Loeb model.
Journal of Information Security. 6(1). p.24.
Liu, Y. and Liu, M., 2015, August. Cloudy with a Chance of Breach: Forecasting Cyber Security
Incidents. In USENIX Security Symposium (pp. 1009-1024).
Online
Cyber attack on Equifax. 2017 [Online] Available through
.<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/business/equifax-cyberattack.html>.
7