Digital Forensic Certification Practice Exam

What type of attack did Reid use to manipulate data on the online COVID survey website?

1. Parameter/form tampering

2. Cross-site scripting

3. Denial of Service

4. Data breach

The correct answer is: Parameter/form tampering

Parameter or form tampering involves the unauthorized modification of parameters in a website's request, typically in an HTTP request, to alter the data being submitted or processed by the web application. In the context of the online COVID survey website mentioned in the question, Reid used this method to manipulate the data submitted through the survey forms. When a user submits data through a form on a website, that data is often sent as parameters in the URL or as part of the request body. An attacker can intercept this data, modify it, and resend it, essentially changing the input that the server processes. This can lead to incorrect conclusions, inflated results, or other manipulations that do not reflect the true data being collected. Understanding this method is critical in digital forensics, as it highlights the vulnerabilities present in web applications that rely on user input for their functionality. It also underscores the importance of validating and sanitizing incoming data to prevent such unauthorized manipulations. The other options, while relevant in the cybersecurity domain, do not accurately describe the specific nature of Reid's attack on the survey website.