File Carving or Data Carving

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What does the term "data carving" or "file carving" really mean? What are the implications of carving with a large distance (in bytes) between the header and footer? Is it feasible for a malware author to create their own file format, hide the file on a system, and use carving to extract it? 


File carving is the process of reassembling computer files from fragments in the absence of file-system metadata. File carving is a well-known computer forensics term used to describe the identification and extraction of file types from unallocated clusters using file signatures. A file signature, also commonly referred to as a magic number, is a constant numerical or text value used to identify a file format ("Data Carving", 2018). 


Since File carving  is usually done by examining the header (the first few bytes) and footer (the last few bytes) of a file, larger distance between the footer and header will affect the amount of data recovered during  the process of reconstructing files by scanning the raw bytes of the disk(V. Gubin, 2017). 

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I would say it’s not that feasible for Malware authors to create their own file types though it’s possible for those have invested in fresh ideas, building tools that are often difficult to be detected by antivirus software and pose challenges to human researchers(Fiscutean, 2019) states that in order to succeed, you need to be aware of the highly customized environment in which you are operating. You need to understand the purpose of this platform, all its restrictions, all its ways of launching files, the various functions that you have in that environment.  


References:  

Data Carving. (2018). Retrieved 12 May 2020, from http://www.forensicexplorer.com/data-carve.php  

V. Gubin, A. (2017). File carving methods in data recovery. Retrieved 12 May 2020, from https://www.klennet.com/carver/carving-methods.aspx  

Fiscutean, A. (2019). Outside-the-box malware is getting more common, security researchers warn. Retrieved 12 May 2020, from https://www.csoonline.com/article/3387952/outside-the-box-malware-is-getting-more-common-security-researchers-warn.html  

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