Digital Forensics - Signature Analysis in Digital Forensics

Running head: DIGITAL FORENSICS
Signature analysis in digital forensics
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DIGITAL FORENSICS1
Signature analysis
Digital forensics is the use of science for the collection, evaluation and presentation of digital
evidence. Signature analysis is a field of digital forensics where the headers and extensions of
the file are compared to an existing database of the file headers and extensions to identify any
occurrence of concealing of the original file. This concealing involves modifying the
extension of the file to keep it hidden from the investigators’ notice. It is a type of pattern
similarity matching of the file extensions to the ones stored in databases. This technique is
known as the cyclic redundancy checking (CRC) and is popularly used as a response
compaction method recently. Signature analysis is a comprehensive method of analyzing data
to support digital forensics.
Reflection on learning experience
The course on digital forensics grabbed my particular interest in the field of signature
analysis. Its fundamental purpose is to spot mismatches in file signature and file extensions
and to a process to determine headers and footers in the file with the help of already existing
file signatures. I learned that as thousands of files are stored in the hard disk, a process of
hash analysis is performed before carrying out the signature analysis. This technique is
simple automation to identify the files that could be neglected, for instance, the browsing
history files of the internet (Shimeall and Spring 2014).
My learning experience included that an application of this technique of signature analysis is
also used in Windows. Windows has stored a unique signature within the first 20 bytes of the
file. The original signature of a particular file can be checked by assessing it with Notepad
(Hassan and Hijazi 2017). This helped me learn the manual process of investigating hidden
files by signature analysis. Some automated techniques of signature analysis are also present