Question

A security engineer is looking at a DNS server following a known incident. The engineer sees the following command as the most recent entry in the server's shell history: dd if=dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

Which of the following MOST likely occurred?

A. A tape backup of the server was performed
B. The drive was cloned for forensic analysis
C. The hard drive was formatted after the incident
D. The DNS log files were rolled daily as expected

Answer 1

The command 'dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb' suggests that the security engineer most likely cloned the drive for forensic analysis after the incident, allowing investigation without compromising the original evidence.

Step-by-step explanation:

The student has asked what the most recent command entry (”dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb”) on a DNS server's shell history suggests about the actions taken by a security engineer following a known incident. This command uses the 'dd' utility, which on Unix-like operating systems, is used to clone or copy the contents of a block storage device. In this context, /dev/sda represents the source drive and /dev/sdb represents the destination drive. Therefore, the use of this command most likely indicates that the drive was cloned for forensic analysis. This action is typical in security contexts after an incident, where cloning the drive allows investigation without altering the original evidence.