Loggmanipulation

Loggmanipulation refers to the alteration, deletion, or fabrication of entries in computer logs to misrepresent events or obscure activity. The term is used in cybersecurity discourse to describe actions by attackers, but it can also describe legitimate maintenance tasks under policy, such as log redaction or selective retention.

Common forms include tampering with system, application, or security logs; forging new entries; truncating or deleting records; backdating timestamps; or manipulating log rotation and retention schemes to suppress evidence.

Within approved management, log manipulation encompasses privacy-preserving auditing (redaction), anonymization, aggregation, and purging according to data-retention rules.

Security-focused controls mitigate loggmanipulation: append-only or write-once storage, cryptographic signing of log entries, chained hashes, time-stamping, and secure centralized logging with tamper-evident mechanisms; regular integrity checks, cross-system reconciliation, and anomaly detection help identify tampering.

Because logs can be critical evidence for incident response and compliance, many organizations treat log integrity as essential; standards and frameworks emphasize audit trails, access controls, and nonrepudiation.