• 디지털산업정보학회논문지
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• 제11권2호
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• pp.73-90
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• 2015

When we apply file commands on files in a directory, the directory as well as the file suffer changes in timestamps of MFT entry. Based on understanding of these changes, this work provides a digital forensic analysis on the timestamp changes of the directory influenced by execution of file commands. NTFS utilizes B-tree indexing structure for managing efficient storage of a huge number of files and fast lookups, which changes an index tree of the directory index when files are operated by commands. From a digital forensic point of view, we try to understand behaviors of the B-tree indexes and are looking for traces of files to collect information. But it is not easy to analyze the directory index entry when the file commands are executed. And researches on a digital forensic about NTFS directory and B-tree indexing are comparatively rare. Focusing on the fact, we present, in this paper, directory timestamp changes after executing file commands including a creation, a copy, a deletion etc are analyzed and a method for finding forensic evidences of a deletion of directory containing files. With some cases, i.e. examples of file copy and file deletion command, analyses on the problem of timestamp changes of the directory are given and the problem of finding evidences of a deletion of directory containging files are shown.

• 한국컴퓨터정보학회논문지
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• 제23권8호
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• pp.85-93
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• 2018

In this research, it is proposed that a method to hide data by modifying directory index entry information. It consists of two methods: a directory list hiding and a file contents hiding. The directory list hiding method is to avoid the list of files from appearing in the file explorer window or the command prompt window. By modifying the file names of several index entries to make them duplicated, if the duplicated files are deleted, then the only the original file is deleted, but the modified files are retained in the MFT entry intact. So, the fact that these files are hidden is not exposed. The file contents hiding is to allocate data to be hidden on an empty index record page that is not used. If many files are made in the directory, several 4KB index records are allocated. NTFS leaves the empty index records unchanged after deleting the files. By modifying the run-list of the index record with the cluster number of the file-to-hide, the contents of the file-to-hide are hidden in the index record. By applying the proposed method to the case of hiding two files, the file lists are not exposed in the file explorer and the command prompt window, and the contents of the file-to-hide are hidden in the empty index record. It is proved that the proposed method has effectiveness and validity.

• 디지털산업정보학회논문지
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• 제11권4호
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• pp.69-79
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• 2015

This research proposes a modified data hiding method to hide data in a slack space of an NTFS index record. The existing data hiding method is for anti-forensics, which uses traces of file names of an index entry in an index record when files are deleted in a direcotry. The proposed method in this paper modifies the existing method to make non-admittable ASCII characters for a file name applicable. By improving the existing method, problems of a file creation error due to non-admittable characters are remedied; including the non-admittable 9 characters (i. e. slash /, colon :, greater than >, less than <, question mark ?, back slash ${\backslash}$, vertical bar |, semi-colon ;, esterisk * ), reserved file names(i. e. CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1~COM9, LPT1~LPT9) and two non-admittable characters for an ending character of the file name(i. e. space and dot). Two results of the two message with non-admittable ASCII characters by keyboard inputs show the applicability of the proposed method.