A cybersecurity analyst is investigating a suspected malware incident on a Windows server. Which of the following commands would be MOST effective for extracting ASCII strings from a suspicious binary file so the analyst can look for hard-coded URLs or other indicators?
The command strings -a suspiciousfile.exe is the best choice. In the Sysinternals Strings utility commonly used on Windows, the -a switch tells the tool to return only ASCII strings, whereas the default search includes both ASCII and Unicode. Focusing on ASCII strings is a quick way to reveal plain-text artifacts such as paths, IP addresses, or HTTP URLs that malware often embeds. Using -u would output only Unicode strings and might miss these ASCII indicators. grep 'http' suspiciousfile.exe merely searches raw bytes and provides no string carving, and file suspiciousfile.exe only reports the file type without extracting any strings.
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What does the 'strings' command do in cybersecurity?
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What does the '-a' option signify when using the 'strings' command?
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Why is using 'grep' to search in a binary file not effective for malware analysis?