DFIROnline Meetup
If you're interested purely in numbers, last night's DFIROnline meetup had, at one point, 97 attendees.  It might've helped that my presentation was addressing malware, and we ended up continuing Cory Altheide's drinking game from last year's OSDFC...every time I mispronounced the word as "mall wear", everyone had to take a drink.  I have to go back and review the tape, but my presentation may have ended up being more like a Ron White concert.  ;-)

My previous blog post includes a link to the slides I used, as well as the malware detection checklist that I mentioned in my presentation. 

There's an excellent write-up at the Digital Forensic Source blog regarding last night's meetup, if you're interested, and you can also search for the "#DFIROnline" hash tag on Twitter to see what comments folks made during the meetup.  I have to say, however, that most of the comments were made online, in chat window 3...

Again, a huge thanks to Mike for setting these up and making the resources available, and thanks to everyone who takes the time out of their evening (or day, depending on where you are) to attend and engage. 

Malware IOCs - Ramnit
Here's an excellent walk-through of creating an IOC for the Ramnit malware.  If you're interested in the OpenIOCs at all, or just want to see how someone would go about creating an IOC, take a look at the post...and be sure to read the first two parts, as well.

If you were on last night's DFIROnline presentation on malware detection within an acquired image, what would the malware characteristics be for Ramnit, based on the IOC?

Timelines
If you like case studies and discussions of practical analysis techniques, take a look at Rob's post on Digital Forensic SIFTing.  Rob provides some very good walk-thrus regarding how to use log2timeline effectively on several incident types, and this is well worth a look.

Tools
A bit ago I ran across something Yogesh had written on parsing IE RecoveryStore files.  As these files are based on the OLE format, and I've recently had some experience writing parsers for files that use this format (Jump Lists, StickyNotes), I thought I'd take a crack at this file, as well.  This is still something I'd like to do...I'm hoping Yogesh will release the specifics of parsing the various streams soon.

Along those lines, John Moan recently commented on a blog post and mentioned that he's written two tools, ParseRS and RipRS.  I haven't had a case yet that involves recovering information about a user's browser activity, but the approach he's taken is very interesting, and I'm sure that John would greatly appreciate it if folks would try the tools out and provide him with some valuable feedback.  I've added the tools to my FOSS Tools page, keeping them persistent in one place.

Case Studies
Speaking of case studies, this is one of the items of interest within the community.  I've known about it for a while...in fact, I've tried to write my books to include case studies, and I also tend to look for similar approaches in other books.  Writing about a tool or technique is dry enough as it is, and the way to engage the reader (using the vehicle of the written word) is to include a case study that describes how the tool or technique was used.

On a number of forums, I see requests for case studies.  Not long ago, a thread was started in a forum that included a request that analysts post case studies; this is nothing new, I've seen it before.  What I haven't seen is those folks then posting case studies themselves.  Now, there are a number of what could be considered case studies online.  In fact, if you go to the FOSS Tools page off of my blog, and scroll down to the "Sample Images" section, you'll see links to several sample images that you can download...several of them have actual scenarios associated with them, as well as solutions.  These can serve as some pretty good case studies.

The next DFIROnline meetup is on Thu, 19 Jan 2012, at 8pm EST.  Eric Huber and I will each be presenting, with my presentation being Malware Detection within an Acquired Image (the PDF for the presentation is linked below).  I thought that this would be a good presentation to give, as it seems to be fairly topical.  We'll be focusing on understanding malware and addressing malware detection within an image acquired from a Windows system.

For those attending the presentation tonight, I'm sure that Eric and Mike would appreciate questions, feedback, thoughts and comments.  During the presentation, please feel free to use the available chat windows for any interaction, and also feel free to contact folks via email during or after the presentations.

In particular, please feel free to either volunteer to give presentations, or to offer up ideas and/or requests for material to be covered in these presentations.  Who knows...there might be someone out there with some great material who simply doesn't think that anyone could possibly be interested in what they have to say...and all it takes is one or two people to send in, "...I'd really appreciate hearing more about this topic...".

Finally, a HUGE thanks to Mike for setting this up and providing the resources to make this event possible on a regular basis.

Resources
Presentation PDF for 19 Jan DFIROnline Meetup

Malware page to this blog
Malware Detection Checklist

Using RegRipper
Russ McRee let me know recently that the folks at Passmark recently posted a tutorial on how to use their OSForensics tool with RegRipper.

Speaking of RegRipper, I was contacted not long ago about setting up a German mirror for RegRipper...while it doesn't appear to active yet, the domain has been set aside, and I'm told that the guys organizing it are going to use it not only as a mirror, but also as a site for some of the plugins they'll be getting in that are specific to what they've been doing.

If you're into GenToo Linux, there's also this site from Stefan Reimer which contains a RegRipper ebuild for that platform.

Updated tool:  Stefan over on the Win4n6 Yahoo group tried out the Jump List parser code and found out that, once again, I'd reversed two of the time stamps embedded in the LNK file parsing code.  I updated the code and reposted the archive.  Thanks!

Meetups
With respect to the NoVA Forensics Meetups, I posted here asking what folks thought about moving them to the DFIROnline meetups, and I tweeted something similar.  Thus far, I have yet to receive a response from the blog post, and of the responses I've seen on Twitter, the vast majority (2 or 3..I've only seen like 4 responses...) indicate that moving to the online format is just fine.  I did receive one response from someone who seems to like the IRL format...although that person also admitted that they haven't actually been to a meetup yet.

So...it looks like for 2012, we'll be moving to the online format.  Looking at the lineup thus far, we already seem to be getting some good presentations coming along in the near future.

Speaking of which, offering to either give a presentation or asking for some specific content to be presented on is a great way to contribute to the community.  Just something to keep in mind...if you're going to say, "...I'd like to hear about this topic", be prepared to engage in a discussion.  This isn't to say that someone's going to come after you and try to belittle your idea...not at all.  Instead, someone willing to present on the topic may need more information about your respective, what you've tried (if anything), any research that you've already done, etc.  So...please be willing to share ideas of what you'd like to see presented, but keep in mind that, "...what do you mean by that?" is NOT a slam.

New Tools
File this one under "oh, cr*p..."...

Seems setmace.exe has been released...if you haven't seen this yet, it apparently overcomes some of the issues with timestomp.exe; in particular, it is reportedly capable of modifying the time stamps in both the $STANDARD_INFORMATION and the $FILE_NAME attributes within the MFT.  However, it does so by creating a randomly-named subdirectory within the same volume, copying the file into the new directory, and then copying it back (Note: the description on the web page uses "copy" and "move" interchangeably).

Okay, so what does this mean to a forensic analyst, if something like this is used maliciously?  I'm going to leave that one to the community...

The folks at SimpleCarver have released a new tool to extract contents from the CurrentDatabase_327.wmdb file, a database associated with the Windows 7 Windows Media Player.   If you're working an exam that involves the use of WMP (i.e., you've seen the use of the application via the Registry and/or Jump Lists...), then you may want to consider taking a look at this tool.

You might also want to check out some of their other free tools.

Melissa posted to her blog regarding a couple of interesting tools for pulling information from memory dumps; specifically, pdgmail and Skypeex.  Both tools apparently require that you run strings first, but that shouldn't be a problem...the cost-benefit analysis seems to indicate that it's well worth running another command line tool.  An alternative to running these tools against a memory dump would be using Volatility or the MoonSols Windows Memory Toolkit to convert a hibernation file to a  raw dump format, and then run these tools.

Speaking of tools, Mike posted a list of non-forensics tools that he uses on Windows systems to his WriteBlocked blog.  This is a very good list, with a lot of useful tools (as well as tools I've used) on that list.  I recently used Wireshark to validate some network traffic...another tool that you might consider using alongside Wireshark is NetworkMiner...it's described as an NFAT tool, so I can see why it's not on Mike's list.  I use VirtualBox...I have a copy of the developer's build of Windows 8 running in it.

Wiping Utilities
Claus is back, and this time has a nice list of wiping utilities.  As forensic analysts, many times we have to sanitize the media that we're using, so having access to these tools is a very good thing.  I've always enjoyed Claus's posts, as well, and hope to see him posting more and more often in 2012.

Can anyone provide a technical reason why wiping with 7 passes (or more) is "better" than wiping with just 1 pass?

File Formats
I was reading over Yogesh Khatri's posts over at SwiftForensics.com, and found this post on IE RecoveryStore files.  Most analysts who have done any work with browser forensics are aware of the value of files that allow the browser to recover previous sessions...these resources can hold a good deal of potentially valuable data.

About halfway down the post, Yogesh states:

DFIROnline
Last Thu, we had (at one point) 32 attendees to the #DFIROnline online meetup, and my impression is that overall, it went pretty well.  Mike took the time to post his impressions, as well.

I think it would be very helpful to hear from others who attended and find out what they liked or didn't like about this format.  What works, what doesn't, what would folks like to see?  I know that with the NoVA Forensics Meetups, most (albeit not all) of the comments about content that I received were from out of town folks, and included, "...set up a meetup in my town...".  Well, Mike's brought that to you...in fact, you can battend from anywhere.  Mike's survey results indicated that case studies and malware analysis are things that folks are interested in, and that's a great start.

Also, I've been thinking...what do folks think about moving the NoVA Forensics Meetups to DFIROnline?

For those interested, I posted my slides (in PDF format) to the Win4n6 Yahoo Group Files section.

A a great big, huge, Foster's thanks to Mike for setting this up. 

Cool Stuff
If you do timeline analysis, David Nides has posted a great little log2timeline cheat sheet over on the SANS Forensics blog.  David made this cheat sheet available at the recent SANS360 event as a single laminated sheet...if you weren't able to make it and didn't get one, download the PDF and print out your own.  The content of the cheat sheet goes right along with Rob's SANS360 presentation, which you can watch here (actually, it's the entire set of presentations).

A huge thanks to David for putting this together and making it available.  This is another great example of how someone can contribute to the community, without having to be able to stand up in front of people, or write code. 

Jump Lists
I recently received a question about Windows 7 Jump Lists, and dusted off some of the code I wrote last summer for parsing Jump Lists.  Yes, it's in Perl...but the way I wrote it was to use just core Perl functions (i.e., no esoteric, deprecated, or OS-specific modules) so that it is platform-independent, as well as much easier to install and run.  Also, I wrote it as Perl modules, so I have additional flexibility in output formats...in short, I can have a script spit out text in a table format, CSV, or even TLN format.

If you haven't yet, check out Mark Woan's JumpLister...it's at version 1.0.5, and does a great job of parsing not only the LNK streams, but also the DestList stream (partial structure of which was first publicly documented here).  It also maps the AppId to an application name...a list of which can be found here, and here. 

Another use I've found for this code is Windows 8 forensics.  I've had a VirtualBox VM of Windows 8 Dev Build running, but recently set up a laptop (wiped XP off of it forever) to dual boot Win7 & 8, so that I could look at some of the various artifacts available, such as wireless networks within the Registry, the use of a Windows Live account to log into Win8, and the Jump Lists...yep, Win8 uses Jump Lists and at this point, they appear to be consistent in format with the Win7 Jump Lists.

Speaking Engagements
My upcoming speaking engagements include the DoD CyberCrime Conference (the conference even has a Facebook page), where I'll be presenting on Timeline Analysis.  I've also submitted to the CfP for the SANS Forensic Summit this next summer (topic: Windows 7 Forensic Analysis), so we'll see how that goes.