QuestionQ344

Logs and Network Forensics

During an incident involving a healthcare portal in Cleveland, analysts observe traffic to an XML endpoint where the attacker seems to have provided hex-encoded characters that, after translation, form a complete XML structure. The team must:

  1. recover the attacker-supplied payload by decoding it, and
  2. confirm the server’s processing outcome for that same request—using one evidentiary source so the timestamps remain aligned.

Which item should they use to perform both tasks in one place?

  • A query string
  • B Apache access.log
  • C GET request
  • D 200 status code
Explanation

An Apache access log entry can record the request timestamp, the full request line—including the path and query string that may contain the hex-encoded payload—and the final HTTP response status. This permits decoding the logged supplied value and assessing the outcome of the exact same request from one timestamped record. Apache documents the Common Log Format as logging %r for the request line and %>s for the response status.

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