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Analysis of the Use of XOR as an Obfuscation Technique in a Real Data Corpus

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Author
Zarate, Carolina
Garfinkel, Simson
Heffernan, Aubin
Horras, Scott
Gorak, Kyle
Date
2014
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Abstract
The only digital forensic tools known to provide an automated approach for evaluating XOR obfuscated data are DCCI Carver and DC3 Carver, two general-purpose carving tools developed by the Defense Cyber Crime Center (DC3). In order to determine the use of XOR as an obfuscation technique and the need to adapt additional tools, we analyzed 2,411 drive images from devices acquired from countries around the world. Using a modified version of the open source tool bulk extractor, evidence of XOR obfuscation was found on 698 drive images, with a maximum of 21,031 XOR-obfuscated features on a single drive. XOR usage in the corpus was observed in files with timestamps between the years 1995 and 2009, with the majority of the usage found in unallocated space. XOR obfuscation was used in the corpus to circumvent malware detection and reverse engineering, to hide information that was apparently being exfiltrated, and by malware detection tools for their quarantine directories and to distribute malware signatures. The results indicate that XOR obfuscation is important to consider when performing malware investigations. However, since the corpus does not contain data sets that are known to have been used by malicious entities, it is difficult to draw conclusions regarding the importance of extracting and examining XOR obfuscated files in criminal, counterintelligence and counterterrorism cases without further research.
Description
IFIP International Conference on Digital Forensics
 
 
Part of the IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology book series (IFIPAICT, volume 433)
 
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This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10945/63417
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