Auditor Independence

Question 1

An auditor has to be independent in fact and in appearance. Auditor independence is at the cornerstone of the auditing profession. You are to critically evaluate these statements and answer the following questions:

1. Why is audit independence important to an auditor? You are expected to analyze the changing landscape over the last 10 years.

2. What governs audit independence in New Zealand? You are expected to include coverage of relevant statutory and professional frameworks.

3. How can auditors safeguard themselves from threats to their independence? (25 marks)

The evaluation should be analytical and not descriptive. Support your evaluation and discussion with relevant examples and appropriate secondary information from your research.

Question 2

The aim of this assessment is to analyze a given sample of malware, using static and dynamic analysis and reverse engineering.

Static and dynamic analysis (20%)

•  You must use your existing knowledge of static and dynamic analysis methods and tools to analyze the sample

Reverse engineering (10%)

•  You must first do some research on assembly control flow constructs (conditional and unconditional). Then you must research how to reverse engineer the sample using suitable tools (e.g. IDA, Olldbg etc.).
•  Examining the disassembled code, you should answer the following questions:
•  Identify one procedure call. Explain what this function does by stepping through the code and explaining the effects it has on the registers and memory.
•  Identify one conditional and one unconditional control flow construct in the code. Again step through the code and explain the effect these constructs have on the stack and registers