Section: Risk, Response and Recovery
Explanation/Reference:
Because computer-generated records normally fall under the category of hearsay evidence because they cannot be proven accurate and reliable this can be a problem.
Under the U.S. Federal Rules of Evidence, hearsay evidence is generally not admissible in court. This inadmissibility is known as the hearsay rule, although there are some exceptions for how, when, by whom and in what circumstances data was collected.
Source: KRUTZ, Ronald L. & VINES, Russel D., The CISSP Prep Guide: Mastering the Ten Domains of Computer Security, John Wiley & Sons, 2001, Chapter 9: Law, Investigation, and Ethics (page 310).
IMPORTANT NOTE:
For the purpose of the exam it is very important to remember the Business Record exemption to the Hearsay Rule. For example: if you create log files and review them on a regular basis as part of a business process, such files would be admissable in court and they would not be considered hearsay because they were made in the course of regular business and it is part of regular course of business to create such record.
Here is another quote from the HISM book:
Business Record Exemption to the Hearsay Rule
Federal Rules of Evidence 803(6) allow a court to admit a report or other business document made at or near the time by or from information transmitted by a person with knowledge, if kept in the course of regularly conducted business activity, and if it was the regular practice of that business activity to make the [report or document], all as shown by testimony of the custodian or other qualified witness, unless the source of information or the method or circumstances of preparation indicate lack of trustworthiness.
To meet Rule 803(6) the witness must:
* Have custody of the records in question on a regular basis.
* Rely on those records in the regular course of business.
* Know that they were prepared in the regular course of business.
Audit trails meet the criteria if they are produced in the normal course of business. The process to produce the output will have to be proven to be reliable. If computer-generated evidence is used and admissible, the court may order disclosure of the details of the computer, logs, and maintenance records in respect to the system generating the printout, and then the defense may use that material to attack the reliability of the evidence. If the audit trails are not used or reviewed - at least the exceptions (e.g., failed log-on attempts) - in the regular course of business, they do not meet the criteria for admissibility.
Federal Rules of Evidence 1001(3) provide another exception to the hearsay rule. This rule allows a memory or disk dump to be admitted as evidence, even though it is not done in the regular course of business. This dump merely acts as statement of fact. System dumps (in binary or hexadecimal) are not hearsay because they are not being offered to prove the truth of the contents, but only the state of the computer.
BUSINESS RECORDS LAW EXAMPLE:
The business records law was enacted in 1931 (PA No. 56). For a document to be admissible under the statute, the proponent must show: (1) the document was made in the regular course of business; (2) it was the regular course of business to make the record; and (3) the record was made when the act, transaction, or event occurred, or shortly thereafter (State v. Vennard, 159 Conn. 385, 397 (1970); Mucci v. LeMonte, 157 Conn. 566, 570 (1969). The failure to establish any one of these essential elements renders the document inadmissible under the statute (McCahill v. Town and Country Associates, Ltd. , 185 Conn. 37 (1981); State v.
Peary, 176 Conn. 170 (1978); Welles v. Fish Transport Co. , , 123 Conn. 49 (1937).
The statute expressly provides that the person who made the business entry does not have to be unavailable as a witness and the proponent does not have to call as a witness the person who made the record or show the person to be unavailable (State v. Jeustiniano, 172 Conn. 275 (1977).
The person offering the business records as evidence does not have to independently prove the trustworthiness of the record. But, there is no presumption that the record is accurate; the record's accuracy and weight are issues for the trier of fact (State v. Waterman, 7 Conn. App. 326 (1986); Handbook of Connecticut Evidence, Second Edition, s 11. 14. 3).
Reference: http://search.cga.state.ct.us/dtsearch_lpa.asp?cmd=getdoc&DocId=16833&Index=I%3A%5Czindex
%5C1995&HitCount=0&hits=&hc=0&req=&Item=712

Section: Access Control
Explanation/Reference:
An automated login function for remote users would imply a weak authentication, thus certainly not a security goal.
Source: TIPTON, Harold F. & KRAUSE, Micki, Information Security Management Handbook, 4th edition, volume 2, 2001, CRC Press, Chapter 5: An Introduction to Secure Remote Access (page 100).

Explanation/Reference:
Data mining is used to reveal hidden relationships, patterns and trends by running queries on large data stores.
Data mining is the act of collecting and analyzing large quantities of information to determine patterns of use or behavior and use those patterns to form conclusions about past, current, or future behavior. Data mining is typically used by large organizations with large databases of customer or consumer behavior.
Retail and credit companies will use data mining to identify buying patterns or trends in geographies, age groups, products, or services. Data mining is essentially the statistical analysis of general information in the absence of specific data.
The following are incorrect answers:
They are incorrect as they all apply to Protecting Objects and the data within them. Layering, abstraction and data hiding are related concepts that can work together to produce modular software that implements an organizations security policies and is more reliable in operation.
Layering is incorrect. Layering assigns specific functions to each layer and communication between layers is only possible through well-defined interfaces. This helps preclude tampering in violation of security policy. In computer programming, layering is the organization of programming into separate functional components that interact in some sequential and hierarchical way, with each layer usually having an interface only to the layer above it and the layer below it.
Abstraction is incorrect. Abstraction "hides" the particulars of how an object functions or stores information and requires the object to be manipulated through well-defined interfaces that can be designed to enforce security policy. Abstraction involves the removal of characteristics from an entity in order to easily represent its essential properties.
Data hiding is incorrect. Data hiding conceals the details of information storage and manipulation within an object by only exposing well defined interfaces to the information rather than the information itslef. For example, the details of how passwords are stored could be hidden inside a password object with exposed interfaces such as check_password, set_password, etc. When a password needs to be verified, the test password is passed to the check_password method and a boolean (true/false) result is returned to indicate if the password is correct without revealing any details of how/where the real passwords are stored. Data hiding maintains activities at different security levels to separate these levels from each other.
The following reference(s) were used for this question:
Hernandez CISSP, Steven (2012-12-21). Official (ISC)2 Guide to the CISSP CBK, Third Edition ((ISC)2 Press) (Kindle Locations 27535-27540). Auerbach Publications. Kindle Edition.
and
Hernandez CISSP, Steven (2012-12-21). Official (ISC)2 Guide to the CISSP CBK, Third Edition ((ISC)2 Press) (Kindle Locations 4269-4273). Auerbach Publications. Kindle Edition.

Section: Security Operation Adimnistration
Explanation/Reference:
Confidentiality is the opposite of disclosure.
Source: KRUTZ, Ronald L. & VINES, Russel D., The CISSP Prep Guide: Mastering the Ten Domains of Computer Security, 2001, John Wiley & Sons, Page 59.

Explanation/Reference:
When evidence from a crime is to be used in the prosecution of a criminal it is critical that you follow the law when handling that evidence. Part of that process is called chain of custody and is when you maintain proactive and documented control over ALL evidence involved in a crime.
Failure to do this can lead to the dismissal of charges against a criminal because if the evidence is compromised because you failed to maintain of chain of custody.
A chain of custody is chronological documentation for evidence in a particular case, and is especially important with electronic evidence due to the possibility of fraudulent data alteration, deletion, or creation.
A fully detailed chain of custody report is necessary to prove the physical custody of a piece of evidence and show all parties that had access to said evidence at any given time.
Evidence must be protected from the time it is collected until the time it is presented in court.
The following answers are incorrect:
- Locking the laptop in your desk: Even this wouldn't assure that the defense team would try to challenge chain of custody handling. It's usually easy to break into a desk drawer and evidence should be stored in approved safes or other storage facility.
- Making a disk image for examination: This is a key part of system forensics where we make a disk image of the evidence system and study that as opposed to studying the real disk drive. That could lead to loss of evidence. However if the original evidence is not secured than the chain of custoday has not been maintained properly.
- Cracking the admin password with chntpw: This isn't correct. Your first mistake was to compromise the chain of custody of the laptop. The chntpw program is a Linux utility to (re)set the password of any user that has a valid (local) account on a Windows system, by modifying the crypted password in the registry's SAM file. You do not need to know the old password to set a new one. It works offline which means you must have physical access (i.e., you have to shutdown your computer and boot off a linux floppy disk). The bootdisk includes stuff to access NTFS partitions and scripts to glue the whole thing together. This utility works with SYSKEY and includes the option to turn it off. A bootdisk image is provided on their website at
http://freecode.com/projects/chntpw .
The following reference(s) was used to create this question:
For more details and to cover 100% of the exam Qs, subscribe to our holistic Security+ 2014 CBT Tutorial at: http://www.cccure.tv/
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_of_custody
and
http://www.datarecovery.com/forensic_chain_of_custody.asp