What is the most likely cause?

An incident investigator asks to receive a copy of the event logs from all firewalls, proxy servers, and Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) on the network of an organization that has experienced a possible breach of security. When the investigator attempts to correlate the information in all of the logs, the sequence of many of the logged events do not match up.

What is the most likely cause?
A . The network devices are not all synchronized.
B. Proper chain of custody was not observed while collecting the logs.
C. The attacker altered or erased events from the logs.
D. The security breach was a false positive.

View Answer

Answer: A

Explanation:

Many network and system administrators don’t pay enough attention to system clock accuracy and time synchronization. Computer clocks can run faster or slower over time, batteries and power sources die, or daylight-saving time changes are forgotten. Sure, there are many more pressing security issues to deal with, but not ensuring that the time on network devices is synchronized can cause problems. And these problems often only come to light after a security incident.

If you suspect a hacker is accessing your network, for example, you will want to analyze your log files to look for any suspicious activity. If your network’s security devices do not have synchronized times, the timestamps’ inaccuracy makes it impossible to correlate log files from different sources. Not only will you have difficulty in tracking events, but you will also find it difficult to use such evidence in court; you won’t be able to illustrate a smooth progression of events as they occurred throughout your network.