Participants (students, junior sysadmins) were asked to “find and download Ubuntu 22.04 ISO” while screen-recorded. We measured: clicks, time, checksum verification rate.

Downloaded the ISO from 12 mirrors (official and top 5 non-official search results). Analyzed file integrity, TLS certificates, and redirect chains. 4. Results | Metric | Official path | Non-official path | |--------|--------------|------------------| | Avg clicks to ISO | 2.1 | 4.7 | | Checksum verified | 68% | 3% | | Malicious redirect | 0% | 12% (fake “Ubuntu Pro” installers) | | Download speed (median) | 8.2 MB/s | 3.4 MB/s |

No malicious ISOs were executed; analysis was done in isolated VMs. 6. Conclusion and Future Work This paper demonstrates that a mundane search query can reveal systemic vulnerabilities in OSS distribution. Future work will extend the BIH to other popular distros (Fedora, Debian) and study its adoption via open-source release.

Digital Artifacts of Open-Source Adoption: A Forensic and Usability Analysis of the Search Query “Download Ubuntu 22.04 ISO”