• International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.31-40
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• 2016

In this paper, we propose a new anti-forensic method for hiding data in the timestamp of a file in the Windows NTFS filesystem. The main idea of the proposed method is to utilize the 16 least significant bits of the 64 bits in the timestamps. The 64-bit timestamp format represents a number of 100-nanosecond intervals, which are small enough to appear in less than a second, and are not commonly displayed with full precision in the Windows Explorer window or the file browsers of forensic tools. This allows them to be manipulated for other purposes. Every file has $STANDARD_INFORMATION and $FILE_NAME attributes, and each attribute has four timestamps respectively, so we can use 16 bytes to hide data. Without any changes in an original timestamp of "year-month-day hour:min:sec" format, we intentionally put manipulated data into the 16 least significant bits, making the existence of the hidden data in the timestamps difficult to uncover or detect. We demonstrated the applicability and feasibility of the proposed method with a test case.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.22 no.8
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• pp.73-83
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• 2017

In this paper, we discuss the differences between an ordinary B-tree and B-tree implemented by NTFS. There are lots of distinctions between the two B-tree, if not understand the distinctions fully, it is difficult to utilize and analyze artifacts of NTFS. Not much, actually, is known about the implementation of NTFS, especially B-tree index for directory management. Several items of B-tree features are performed that includes a node size, minimum number of children, root node without children, type of key, key sorting, type of pointer to child node, expansion and reduction of node, return of node. Furthermore, it is emphasized the fact that NTFS use B-tree structure not B+structure clearly.

• International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.17-26
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• 2017

An anti-forensic data hiding method in an NTFS index record is a method designed for anti-forensics, which records data as a file name in index entries and thereafter the index entries are made to remain in the intentionally generated slack area in a 4KB-sized index record[7]. In this paper, we propose a maximum data allocation rule for an anti-forensic data hiding method in an NTFS index record; i.e., a computational method for storing optimal data to hide data in an index record of NTFS is developed and the optimal solution is obtained by applying the method. We confirm that the result of analyzing the case where the number of index entries n = 7 is the maximum case, and show the screen captures of index entries as experimental results.

• Journal of Korea Society of Digital Industry and Information Management
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.11-25
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• 2020

This study proposes a method to manipulate fragmentation of disks by arbitrarily allocating and releasing the status of a disk cluster in the NTFS file system. This method allows experiments to be performed in several studies related to fragmentation problems on disk cluster. Typical applicable research examples include testing the performance of disk defragmentation tools according to the state of fragmentation, establishing an experimental environment for fragmented file carving methods for digital forensics, setting up cluster fragmentation for testing the robustness of data hiding methods within directory indexes, and testing the file system's disk allocation methods according to the various version of Windows. This method suggests how a single file occupies a cluster and presents an algorithm with a flowchart. It raises three tricky problems to solve the method, and we propose solutions to the problems. Experiments for allocating the disk cluster to be fragmented to the maximum extent possible, it then performs a disk defragmentation experiment to prove the proposed method is effective.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.885-896
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• 2014

The files in computer storages can be deleted due to unexpected failures or accidents. Some malicious users often delete data by himself for anti-forensics. If deleted files are associated with crimes or important documents in business, they should be recovered and the recovery tool is necessary. The recovery methods and tools for some filesystems such as NTFS, FAT, and EXT have been developed actively. However, there has not been any researches for recovering deleted files in XFS filesystem applied to NAS or CCTV. In addition, since the current related tools are based on the traditional signature detection methods, they have low recovery rates. Therefore, this paper suggests the recovery methods for deleted files based on metadata and signature detection in XFS filesystem, and verifies the results by conducting experiment in real environment.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Computer Information Conference
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• 2019.07a
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• pp.391-392
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• 2019

본 논문에서는 타임스탬프의 위변조를 위한 안티포렌식의 도구로 사용되는 타임스탬프 변경도구들에 기능에 대하여 디지털 포렌식 관점에서 분석을 수행한다. 타임스탬프 변경도구들로써 수행할 수 있는 타임스탬프 변경작업의 범위와 특징을 찾아본다. NTFS파일시스템에서 사용하는 타임스탬프 변경도구들의 기능상의 분류는 그것들이 변경할 수 있는 타임스탬프 종류와 정밀도를 기준으로 정하고 그 도구들을 사용한 후에 기록된 타임스탬프의 특징들을 디지털 포렌식 관점에서 분석을 수행하기로 한다. 이 연구에서의 분류 형태 중 타입 I은 FileTouch.exe, SKTimeStamp, BulkFileChanger류의 도구들과 타입 II는 timestomp, 타입 III은 SetMACE로 분류하고 각 도구들을 사용한 후에 변경된 타임스탬프들의 특징을 살펴보기로 한다.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.24 no.9
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• pp.51-58
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• 2019

Temporal analysis is very useful and important for digital forensics for reconstructing the timeline of digital events. Forgery of a file's timestamp can lead to inconsistencies in the overall temporal relationship, making it difficult to analyze the timeline in reconstructing actions or events and the results of the analysis might not be reliable. The purpose of the timestamp change is to hide the data in a steganographic way, and the other purpose is for anti-forensics. In both cases, the time stamp change tools are requested to use. In this paper, we propose a classification method based on the behavior of the timestamp change tools. The timestamp change tools are categorized three types according to patterns of the changed timestamps after using the tools. By analyzing the changed timestamps, it can be decided what kind of tool is used. And we show that the three types of the patterns are closely related to API functions which are used to develop the tools.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.79-91
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• 2010

In digital forensics, the creation time, last modified time, and last accessed time of a file or folder are important factors that can indicate events that have affected a computer system. The form of the time information varies with the file system, depending on the user's actions such as copy, transfer, or network transport of files. Specific changes of the time information may be of considerable help in analyzing the user's actions in the computer system. This paper analyzes changes in the time information of files and folders for different operations of the NTFS and attempts to reconstruct the user's actions.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.1397-1404
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• 2017

When a digital forensic investigation is conducted on a damaged storage medium, recovery is performed using a recovery tool. But the result of each recovery tool is different depending on the tools. Therefore, it is necessary to identify and use the performance and limitations of the tool for accurate investigation. In this paper, we propose a scenario considering the disk recognition type such as MBR, GPT and the structural characteristics of FAT32 and NTFS filesystem to verify the performance of the partition recovery tool. And then We validate the existing tools with the data set built on the scenarios.

• Journal of Korea Society of Digital Industry and Information Management
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.91-105
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• 2014

This paper proposes a digital forensic method by an evaluation function based on timestamp changing patterns. Operations on file or folder leave changed timestamps, which give the ways to know what operations were executed. Changes of timestamps of ten operations of a file and eight operations of a folder were examined. Analyses on the changes on the eight folder operations are newly added in this paper, which are not performed in the previous works. Based on the timestamps changes of the file and the folder, two evaluation functions are proposed. The first evaluation function checks whether timestamps are changed by file and folder operations, and the second evaluation function checks whether timestamps are originated from a source file or other attribute field. By the two output values from these evaluation functions, a digital forensic investigation on the file or the folder is performed. With some cases, i. e. file copy and folder creation operations, the proposed forensic method is tested for its usefulness.