Book Review: Windows Registry Forensics

Harlan Carvey has done it (again) and continues to raise the bar. It's a must read for the digital forensic analyst! Harlan has brought his many years of experience and research in forensic analysis of the windows registry, into one book. As Rob Lee (SANS Institute) stated, “Windows Registry Forensics provides extensive proof that registry examination is critical to every digital forensic case.”

Dave Hull, fellow SANS Computer Forensic blog editor and SANS Instructor, is the Technical Editor for Windows Registry Forensics (WRF).           

The book contains sidebars, tips, notes, and various analysis concepts of registry forensics, which the author highlights. Of course, this book wouldn’t be complete without tools. Windows Registry Forensics paperback includes a CD that contains forensic tools and code (w/perl, of course), discussed in WRF.

In Chapter 1 (Registry Analysis), Harlan goes into the structure of the registry, which consists of binary data, and for the most part is unbeknownst to the user. Nomenclature of the windows registry (i.e. keys, sub-keys, values, and data) and analyzing registry cell structure data is covered thoroughly in this chapter.

In Chapter 2 (Tools), Harlan discusses free and open source tools to the reader, which can immediately be used for conducting his/her own analysis of registry artifacts, such as Reg Ripper, Autoruns, Regshot, and MiTeC Registry File Viewer (RFV). This chapter walks the reader through live response and forensic analysis of registry artifacts using various free tools.

Chapter 3 (Case Studies: The System) and Chapter 4 (Case Studies: Tracking User Activity) go hand-in-hand. These chapters are the practical application portion of the book, providing the reader with real-case examples, and outlining registry forensic artifacts (or lack thereof…remember, the absence of an artifact in itself is an artifact). Harlan discusses how to crack the SAM using free tools (e.g. Cain, OphCrack). I’ve read a lot of material the last few years covering USB device artifacts; I’ve not seen a more detailed analysis of USB artifacts through registry forensic analysis, until reading Windows Registry Forensics. The case studies chapters also cover real world scenarios (e.g. The Trojan Defense, Tying It Together) and how the analyst’s investigative goals can be guided by using registry analysis, during the intrusion investigation or forensic examination.

In summary, there are a few grammatical and “print shop” errors that should have been caught by the publisher prior to printing the book; however, that does not keep me from giving this book a 5-star review. Once an author submits a final manuscript to a publisher, the publisher is responsible for ensuring the book and content are print (”showroom”) ready. Once again Harlan delivered an exceptional reference book to digital forensic community!

What I’ve taken away from this book is the registry key structure and its nomenclature, key time stamps (data correlation and understanding LastWrite times), deleted registry keys, and the registry redirector (i.e. 64-bit OS calling on 32-bit application in registry). If you want to sharpen your forensic analysis skills, look no farther than Windows Registry Forensics. There’s a key for that!

Computer Forensics: What's in a name? After all it's only a name.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." -William Shakespeare

While this may hold true in a literary setting, what about computer/digital forensics? How important is a name? I think as a community we need to truly define ourselves. The community seems to be steering towards digital forensics (computer forensics, mobile device forensics, etc. as sub-disciplines). John J Barbara had a two part series in DFI News on the Digital Forensic Sub-Disciplines, which was a great article outlining these sub-disciplines and ASCLD/LAB defining the lifecycle of one discipline into the next. Where does one discipline begin and where does one end? 

For example, while you (forensic examiner/analyst) are performing a forensic analysis of a forensic image you carve out a deleted video (.AVI) of the alleged crime (e.g. armed robbery) from the suspect's seized computer. The case officer/investigator requests you to "enhance" the video quality to aid in the "forensic identification" of a second suspect. Have you crossed over from the computer/digital forensic discipline into video forensic analysis sub-discipline? Can you testify as a forensic video expert?

I've had the opportunity to explain these separate disciplines of computer forensics and mobile device forensics to a jury. A lot of people feel that because you are an "expert" in the area of computer forensics that you should automatically be an "expert" in mobile device forensics. There are a lot of gurus out there that live and breathe mobile device forensics and are experts in the field; however, I'm not one of them. As a community and a computer/digital forensic discipline we must know where these boundaries exist and educate not only ourselves, but our teams/clients/attorneys/officers, etc. about these sub-disciplines. Remember, as the expert it is your responsibility to establish those boundaries with clients/attorneys and a jury.

With these disciplines/sub-disciplines, it also brings up another ongoing issue in the community. What do we call ourselves? Are you a computer forensic technician/examiner/analyst, a digital forensic technician/examiner/analyst? The king of drive-bys, Ovie Carroll, brought up this very topic in this week's CyberSpeak. Besides telling us to go "PreFetch Ourselves" in this episode, Ovie discusses some important issues about the community defining itself (nothing but love for the Ovie).

You wouldn't call an engineer, a technician; nor should you assume your technician is an engineer. Same methodology applies to computer forensics. A forensic technician/first responder's training and expertise will differ from a forensic analyst. Just as a forensic examiner and forensic analyst are different. Each person interacts with the digital evidence in a different manner with separate job duties and goals.

So are you a technician, examiner, analyst, expert or even a scientist? These titles have been discussed on several forensic mailing lists in the past and the debates are always interesting.


Honorable Mentions

• More on Volume Shadow Copies on Harlan's blog. Also here and here.
• The NYC4SEC meetup is going on right now. Follow @NYC4SEC and checkout the group's website.
• Indy Digital Forensics Group is up and running. Our December meeting and met a group of great forensic folks from law enforcement, e-discovery, corporate/ir, educators, etc. January meeting we formed an ASDFED chapter. If you are driving distance within Indianapolis and looking at getting involved this is a great opportunity. Contact Rob Zirnstein (President of Indianapolis ASDFED Chapter) if you would like to join our chapter or attend meeting. Our meetings are posted on the ASDFED website.
• Ken Pryor's Brief Update on his Digital Forensics Blog. Also Part II of Ken's Forensics on less-than a shoestring budget on the SANS Computer Forensics and Incident Response Blog.
• TaoSecurity: Wanted: Incident Handler in Michigan
• CyberSpeak Jan 16, 2011- PreFetch Yourself
• The Apple Examiner is a great resource for iOS forensic investigations (formerly MacOSXForensics). Also news today that MacMarshal released Mac Memory Reader, a free command line acquisition tool for capturing RAM on Mac computers.
• Windows Registry Forensics by Harlan Carvey is now available. If you follow @Syngress on Twitter you may have caught the 50% off sale yesterday only on this book. I have mine ordered and looking forward to receiving it.

 If you read a book you like or one that was a very painful process from beginning to end, write about it and share your viewpoints. Write an amazon book review. This is good for providing feedback to the author and it is good for the forensic community because you can let others know what books they need to have on their bookshelf and books they should not waste their money on.

Thank you for the kind feedback and continuing to follow my blog; keep those tweets, e-mails, and page views coming! My next blog post I plan to share some forensic projects I'm working on and the power of sharing what you know outside of the computer forensic community.

Computer Forensic Source: Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year

Merry Christmas! Hopefully, you've enjoyed a great Christmas with family and friends. God bless the men & women in our military, law enforcement, emergency personnel, and others that are serving their country or community!
2010 has been a great year for the Computer Forensic Source blog and I thank you for following the blog and providing feedback, which motivates me to keep the forensic content fresh. The tweets, comments, CFS blog references and links are appreciated [Keep those coming] :)
I'm excited about 2011 and thank each of you for a great 2010 and your continued support into the new year. The most viewed CFS blog post this year was my SANS Computer Forensics and Incident Response blog article on Intro to Report Writing in Digital Forensics. There will be a part II that is in queue, and just needs to be edited, so stay tuned. If you have any feedback regarding the CFS blog, please send e-mail to info-at-computerforensicsource-dot-com.

Computer Forensic Book Review: Mac OS X, iPod, and iPhone Forensic Analysis DVD Toolkit

I recently finished reading Mac OS X, iPod, and iPhone Forensic Analysis DVD Toolkit by (Ryan Kubasiak and Sean Morrissey) and was somewhat surprised to find there were no reviews on Amazon. I've submitted my Amazon review and I’m sharing it here with you on my blog.

The book introduces the reader to the Mac OS X operating system and common Apple hardware (i.e. iPods, iPhones, iMacs, etc.) out there today. The intended audience is digital forensic investigators, security professionals, and law enforcement. If you've read a Syngress digital forensics book such as Harlan Carvey’s Windows Forensic Analysis, Second Edition, you are familiar with how these books encourage a hands-on learning approach through exercises and the use of specific forensic tools. This book follows the same path and, like Carvey’s book, offers a DVD filled with exercises, images, and tools for the DIY forensicator.

The authors provide an excellent overview of the Macintosh operating system and include topics such as disk partitioning and Apple Disk images (DMG). For example, chapter 4 is dedicated to the HFS+ file system used by Macintosh computers and drills down to disk level file system forensics. While Brian Carrier's File System Forensic Analysis book touches on Apple partitions, the Mac OS X iPod, and iPhone Forensic Analysis DVD Toolkit book dives even more deeply into the file system structure and nomenclature.

This book demystifies topics such as FileVault (Apple's answer to file encryption) and  Time Machine. It includes content on decrypting FileVault and restoring files from a Time Machine backup. The authors draw on their extensive experience and research to provide best practices, tips, and tricks for preserving and forensically acquiring data from Mac file systems. The authors extensively cover email, Safari based internet artifacts, chat logs, photos, videos, documents, .plists, and other valuable forensic evidence that can be recovered from a Macintosh.

The authors provide an extensive tool set with the accompanying DVD that includes both proprietary and open source tools that can be used to acquire and analyze devices such as Apple computers, iPhone and iPods. The Appendix is full of How-To's that deal with such issues as Bootcamp and virtualization, setting up a Macintosh computer for forensic use, and capturing volatile data on a Mac when conducting digital forensic triage on-scene of an incident.

If you are a digital forensic practitioner and want to learn Macintosh forensics, I highly recommend this book. Now is the time to become familiar with Macintosh and iOS forensics. If you have not had to image or analyze a Macintosh yet, you will. This book makes a great addition to your computer forensic library and is a resource for conducting Macintosh forensic examinations. If the authors pursue a 2nd edition of the book, I'd like to see more information on iOS devices (Note: Late breaking...it appears there is a book in the works iOS Forensic Analysis: for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch), iDisk ("data from the cloud"), plists, low-level disk forensics, and maybe a chapter on tying it all together for the investigator/examiner when responding to an incident.

So if you are debating whether or not to add this book to your computer forensic reading library, Chapter 4: HFS Plus File System and Chapter 7: Acquiring Forensic Images are invaluable for an investigator/examiner; from Catalog Files in the HFS Plus File System, to imaging an iPod from your forensically configured Macintosh. This book will be an immediate reference tool for me when I’m performing Macintosh digital forensics.

Author's Note: As I stated initially in this blog post, I was disappointed to not see any reviews on Amazon for this book. If you read a book, whether you enjoyed the book or it was a painstaking process, share that information with others. Write a blog post (contact me and I'd be more than happy to share your book review with the forensic community via CFS blog) or publish a book review online. Remember, the community needs you!  

Computer Forensics: Thoughts on sharing & forensic nuggets

This is just a quick late Friday afternoon entry to my blog. A common denominator and recurring theme, that seems to be the focal point of many presentations/meetings that I've had the opportunity to attend recently, is sharing and collaboration amongst practitioners in the digital forensics community.
As I discussed here, Harlan Carvey delivered an excellent keynote during the WACCI Conference on this very topic. I also see a solid trend in the law enforcement community to share more information with trusted partners outside of the law enforcement community.
Personally, I like the idea that Harlan brought up and that was discussed at the WACCI Conference this year. Whatever means is used to exchange and share information, it has to be a two-way street. If you are taking information from the well of knowledge, but not delivering anything to further the community or the knowledge-base than you should not to be allowed to continue to participate in the exchange of information within that group.
Sharing information and intel is good, but as we've seen with the WikiLeaks controversy recently, a physical security mentality has to be applied to information security. Do we know who has accessed file.xyz across the entire organization? Are the credentials to access file.xyz being controlled and monitored at all times? Do we know where file.xyz is located at all times and its route of travel across the computer/network infrastructure?
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to sit down with some great practitioners from law enforcement, corporate IR, small business executives, consultants, and e-disco folks at the Indy Digital Forensics Association meeting. We had a great turnout yesterday and will be proceeding in forming an ASDFED chapter. One of the positive things I seen regarding ASDFED is its transparency and not just limited to one side of our adversarial system. I'm looking forward to it, as it will bring law enforcement, attorneys, examiners, incident responders, corporate investigators, small businesses, etc. together to contribute and share information.

* Updating log2timelime on SIFT workstation in this week's SANS Digital Forensics Case Leads
on the SANS Computer Forensics Blog. Speaking of the SANS Digital Forensics Blog and if you missed my last blog post, you should check out the new & improved SANS Computer Forensics Blog.

* Windows 7 Recycle Bin EnScript

* A Bit More On Timelines and Stuff- Harlan discusses noise & data reduction in timeline analysis. Of interest when dealing with truncated timelines, checkout Go-OO, which was mentioned on Ken Pryor's blog here.

Here are a few historical items that I've bookmarked through the years and came across this afternoon while doing some research:

*Bypassing a Windows login password in order to boot a virtual machine
*Windows Oddities
*ShellBags Registry Forensics

Thank you for those of you that follow and continue to read my blog (much appreciated). Traffic up over 54% for the last 30 days. Drop me a comment, email, or follow me on Twitter. My twitter feed is set to private so if you send me a follow request and I don't approve, drop me an e-mail info-at-computerforensicsource-dot-com.