Digital Forensics Task 3: Personal Reflection on Signature Analysis

This report is a reflective essay on the student's learning experience in a digital forensics module, specifically focusing on signature analysis. The essay discusses the fundamental purpose of signature analysis in identifying file mismatches, headers, and extensions to detect concealed files. The student reflects on the practical sessions, detailing the use of hash analysis, Windows signature checks, and tools like HexBrowser. The report also covers the logic behind identifying forgeries in signatures and its applications in various industries. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of signature analysis while acknowledging its limitations, particularly its reliance on a complete database of predefined files. The student reflects on the practical sessions, detailing the use of hash analysis, Windows signature checks, and tools like HexBrowser. The report also covers the logic behind identifying forgeries in signatures and its applications in various industries. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of signature analysis while acknowledging its limitations, particularly its reliance on a complete database of predefined files.

Running head: DIGITAL FORENSICS
Signature analysis in digital forensics
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1DIGITAL FORENSICS
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

2DIGITAL FORENSICS
and are the more commonly used methods. One such tool is the HexBrowser, which can
recognize about 1000 varying formats of files.
This field also made me understand the logic behind identifying forgeries in signatures. It
made me understand that signature analysis involves scrutinizing signatures of people which
helps in detecting forgeries. This analysis of the signatures of the people requires special
software that can evaluate the contours and the process of creating the signature. I realized
that signatures that have been forged require more time to be produced than the genuine ones
and it is nearly impossible to replicate the motion to time function of the original signature.
Some of the software involved in signature analysis can identify these variations by
comparing multiple signatures. I learned that human signature analysis has applications in
government insurance, banks and health care industries as well.
Conclusion
To conclude, signature analysis is a vital technique in the domain of digital forensics. It is
useful to identify any concealment of files, which can be ignored otherwise. However, a
limitation of this technique is that it is dependent entirely on the database with the stored
predefined files. If the database is not complete, some essential files might get overlooked
and thereby lose valuable evidence.

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References
Hassan, N.A. and Hijazi, R., 2017. Data Hiding Techniques in Windows OS. Syngress.
Shimeall, T.J. and Spring, J.M., 2014. Network analysis and forensics. In Introduction to
Information Security (pp. 235-251). Syngress.