1. ASCII A set of codes defining all the various keystrokes
you could make, including letters, numbers, char-
acters, and even the spacebar and return keys.
2. Anonymous remailing The process of sending an email message to
an anonymizer. The anonymizer strips identifying
information from an email message before for-
warding it with the anonymous mailing comput-
er's IP address.
3. Anti-forensics The actions that perpetrators take to conceal their
locations, activities, or identities.
4. Asymmetric cryptography Cryptography wherein two keys are used: one to
encrypt the message and another to decrypt it.
5. ATM A high-speed connection technology that uses
fixed-length, 53-byte packets called calls.
6. Authenticate To verify the identity of a person, or to verify evi-
dence.
7. BTS The part of the cell network responsible for com-
munications between the mobile phone and the
network switching system.
8. Bit-level information Information at the level of actual 1s and 0s stored
in memory or on the storage device.
9. Block cipher A form of cryptography that encrypts data in
blocks; 64-bit blocks are quite common, although
some algorithms (like AES) use larger blocks.
10. Bootstrap environment
, WGU-D431 - Digital Forensics in Cybersecurity
A special program, such as U-Boot or RedBoot,
that is stored in a special section of the flash
memory.
11. Brute-force attack An attack in which the attacker tries to decrypt a
message by simply applying every possible key in
the keyspace.
12. BCP A plan for maintaining minimal operations until
the business can return to full normal operations.
13. BIA An analysis of how specific incidents might impact
the business operations.
14. Caesar cipher The method of cryptography in which someone
chooses a number by which to shift each letter
of a text in the alphabet and substitute the new
letter for the letter being encrypted. This is also
known as a monoalphabet, single-alphabet, or
substitution cipher.
15. Carrier The signal, stream, or data file in which the pay-
load is hidden.
16. Channel The type of medium used to hide data in
steganography. This may be photos, video, sound
files, or Voice over IP.
17. Clean room An environment that has a controlled level of con-
tamination, such as from dust, microbes, and oth-
er particles.
18. Consistency checking
, WGU-D431 - Digital Forensics in Cybersecurity
A technique for file system repair that involves
scanning a disk's logical structure and ensuring
that it is consistent with its specification.
19. Cryptanalysis A method of using techniques other than brute
force to derive a cryptographic key.
20. CV An extensive document expounding one's expe-
rience and qualifications for a position, similar
to a résumé but with more detail. In academia
and expert work, it is usually used rather than a
résumé.
21. Data consistency The act of ensuring the data that is extracted is
consistent.
22. Daubert standard The standard holding that only methods and tools
widely accepted in the scientific community can
be used in court.
23. DRP A plan for returning the business to full normal
operations.
24. Disk forensics The process of acquiring and analyzing informa-
tion stored on physical storage media, such as
computer hard drives or smartphones.
25. DOS A command-line operating system.
26. Disk striping Distribution of data across multiple disk sectors to
improve speed (also called RAID 0).
27. Drive geometry