From the course: Cybersecurity Foundations: Computer Forensics

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Understanding hexadecimal numbers

Understanding hexadecimal numbers

From the course: Cybersecurity Foundations: Computer Forensics

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Understanding hexadecimal numbers

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- [Instructor] The knowledge of hexadecimal numbers is essential in the toolbox of a digital forensics investigator. One of the motivations for using hexadecimal numbers is that it's often necessary to investigate data at a binary level. We use binary numbers to represent everything on a computer device. Binary numbers rely on only two symbols, 0 and 1. Machine code is a string or strings consisting of 0s and 1s. It's the only language your computer speaks. Criminals frequently hide or fabricate their data at the machine code level. Therefore, as a digital forensics investigator, you should also be able to examine your evidence in its native format, that is combination of 0s and 1s. The challenge associated with reading machine code is that there are simply too many digits to deal with. A more compact way to represent binary numbers makes human inspection much easier. The way you represent your data in machine code is…

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