System and method for computer data type identification

A system for identifying a file type comprising:

• a computing device comprising a processor, a memory, and a non-volatile data storage device;
• a file-print extractor comprising a first plurality of programming instructions stored in the memory and operable on the processor, wherein the first plurality of programming instructions, when operating on the processor, causes the computing device to:
• receive a file;
• parse the binary contents of the file into groups of bits or bytes;
• generate a file-print for the file, the file-print comprising:
• an actual mean value of the number of occurrences of each group in the file;
• and
• a standard deviation of the actual mean value of the number of occurrences from an expected mean value of the number of occurrences;
• send the file-print to a file classifier;
• and
• a file classifier comprising a second plurality of programming instructions stored in the memory and operable on the processor, wherein the second plurality of programming instructions, when operating on the processor, causes the processor to:
• receive the file-print;
• process the file-print through a trained machine learning algorithm to obtain a file type prediction;
• and
• identify the file type based on the prediction.