There are some great tools out there for viewing the Registry in an acquired image. EnCase has this, as does ProDiscover (I tend to prefer ProDiscover's ability to parse and display the Registry...) and AccessData's Registry Viewer. Other tools have similar abilities, as well. But you know what? Most times, I don't want to view the Registry. Nope. Most times, I don't care about 90% of what's there. That's why I wrote most of the tools available on the DVD that ships with my book, and why I continue to write other, similar tools.

For example, if I want to get an idea of the user's activity on a system, one of the first places I go is to the SAM hive, and see if the user had a local account on the system. From there, I go to the user's hive file (NTUSER.DAT) located in their profile, and start pulling out specific bits of information...parsing the UserAssist keys, etc...anything that shows not only the user's activities on the system, but also a timeline of that activity. Thanks to folks like Didier Stevens, we all have a greater understanding of the contents of the UserAssist keys.

Now, the same sort of thing applies to the entire system. For example, one of the tools I wrote allows me to type in a single command, and I'll know all of the USB removable storage devices that had been attached to the system, and when they were last attached. Note: this is system-wide information, but we now know how to tie that activity to a specific user.

On XP systems, we also have the Registry files in the Restore Points available for analysis. One great example of this is the LEO that wanted to know when a user had been moved from the Users to the Administrators group...by going back through the SAM hives maintained in the Restore Points, he was able to show approximately when that happened, and then tied that to other activity on the system, as well.

So...it's pretty clear that when it comes to Registry analysis, the RegEdit-style display of the Registry has limited usefulness. But it's also clear that there really isn't much of a commercial market for these kinds of tools. So what's the answer? Well, just like the folks who get their rides or cribs pimped out on TV, specialists bring a lot to the table. What needs to happen is greater communication of needs, and there are folks out there willing and able to fulfill that need.

Here's a good question to get discussion started...what's good, easy-to-use and easy-to-access format for a guideline of what's available in the Registry (and where)? I included an Excel spreadsheet with my book...does this work for folks? Is the "compiled HTML" (ie, *.chm) Windows Help format easier to use?

If you can't think of a good format, maybe the way to start is this...what information would you put into something like this, and how would you format or organize it?

Whenever you perform a live acquisition, what do you do? Document the system, write down things like the system model (ie., Dell PowerEdge 2960, etc), maybe write down any specific identifiers (such as the Dell service tag) and then acquire the system. But is this enough data? Are we missing things by not including the collection of other data in our live acquisition process?

What about collecting volatile data? I've had to perform live acquisitions of systems that had been rebooted multiple times since the incident was discovered, as well as systems that could not be acquired without booting them (SAS/SATA drives, etc.). Under those circumstances, maybe I wouldn't need to collect volatile data...after all, what data of interest would it contain...but maybe we should do so anyway.

How about collecting non-volatile data? Like the system name and IP address? Or the disk configuration? One of the tools available on the DVD that comes with my book lets you see the following information about hard drives attached to the system:

DeviceID : \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0
Model : ST910021AS
Interface : IDE
Media : Fixed hard disk media
Capabilities :
Random Access
Supports Writing
Signature : 0x41ab2316
Serial No : 3MH0B9G3

DeviceID : \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1
Model : WDC WD12 00UE-00KVT0 USB Device
Interface : USB
Media : Fixed hard disk media
Capabilities :
Random Access
Supports Writing
Signature : 0x96244465
Serial No :

Another tool lets you see the following:

Drive Type File System Path Free Space
----- ----- ----------- ----- ----------
C:\ Fixed NTFS 17.96 GB
D:\ Fixed NTFS 38.51 GB
E:\ CD-ROM 0.00
G:\ Fixed NTFS 42.24 GB

In the above output, notice that there are no network drives attached to the test system...no shares mapped. Had there been any, the "Type" would have been listed as "Network", and the path would have been displayed.

Does it make sense to acquire this sort of information when performing a live acquisition? If so, is this information sufficient...or, what other information, at a minimum, should be collected?

Are there conditions under which I would acquire certain info, but not others? For example, if the system had not been rebooted, would I dump the contents of physical memory (I'd say "yes" to that one)...however, if the system had been accessed by admins, scanned with AV, and rebooted several times, would it do me any good at that point to dump RAM or should I simply document the fact that I didn't, and why?

Would this information be collected prior to the live acquisition, or immediately following?

What are your thoughts...and why?

PS: If you can think of a pseudonym I can use...think of it as a "hacker handle" (that thing that Joey from Hackers kept whining about), but REALLY cool, like "Xzibit", let me know. Oh, yeah...Ovie Carroll needs one, too. ;-)

How often do you find yourself in the position where, when performing forensic analysis, you end up either not having the tools you need (ie, the tools you do have don't show you what you need, or don't provide you with useful output)? Many of the tools we use provide basic functionality, but there are very few tools that go beyond that, and are capable of providing what we need over a large number of cases (or in some instances, even examination to examination). This leads to one of the major challenges (IMHO) of the forensic community...having the right tool for the job. Oddly enough, there just isn't a great market for tools that do very specific things like parse binary files, extract data from the Registry, etc. The lack of such tools is very likely due to the volume of work (i.e., case load) that needs to be done, and to a lack of training...commercial GUI tools with buttons to push seem to be preferred over open-source command line tools, but only if the need is actually recognized. Do we always tell someone when we need something specific, or do we just put our heads down, push through on the investigation using the tools and skill sets that we have at hand, and never address the issue because of our work load?

With your forensic-analysis-tool-of-choice (FTK, EnCase, ProDiscover, etc.), many times you may still be left with the thought, "...that data isn't in a format I can easily understand or use...". Know what I mean? Ever been there? I'm sure you have...extract that Event Log file from an image and load it up into Event Viewer on your analysis system, only to be confronted with an error message telling you that the Event Log is "corrupted". What do you do? Boot the image with LiveView (version 0.6 is available, by the way) and log into it to view the Event Log? Got the password?

The answer to this dilemma is to take a page from Xzibit's book and "pimp my forensics analysis". That's right, we're going to customize or "trick it out" our systems with the tools and stuff you need to do the job.

One way to get started on this is to take a look at my book [WARNING: Shameless self-promotion approaching...], Windows Forensic Analysis; specifically at some of the tools that ship on the accompanying DVD. All of the tools were written in Perl, but all but a few have been "compiled" into standalone EXEs so that you don't have to have Perl installed to run them, or know anything about Perl -- in fact, based on the emails I have received since the book was released in May 2007, the real limiting factor appears to be nothing more than a lack of familiarity with running command line (CLI) tools (re: over-dependence on pushing buttons). The tools were developed out of my own needs, and my hope is that as folks read the book, they too will recognize the value in parsing the Event Log files, Registry, etc., as well as the value of the tools provided.

Another resource is the upcoming Perl Scripting for Forensic Investigation and Security, to be published in the near future by Syngress/Elsevier.

What do these two resources provide? In a nutshell, customized and customizable tools. While a number of tools exist that will let you view the Registry in the familiar (via RegEdit) tree-style format, how many of those tools will translate arbitrary binary data stored in the Registry values? How many will do correlation, not only between multiple keys within a hive, but across hives, as well?

How many of the tools will allow you to parse the contents of a Windows 2000, XP, or 2003 Event Log file into an Excel spreadsheet, in a format that is easily sorted and searched? Or report on various event record statistics?

How many of these tools provide the basis for growth and customization, in order to meet the needs of a future investigation? Some tools do...they provide base functionality, and allow the user to extend that functionality through scripting languages. Some are easier to learn than others, and some are more functional that others. But even these can be limiting sometimes.

The data is there, folks...what slows us down sometimes is either (a) not knowing that the data is there (and that a resource is a source of valuable data or evidence), and (b) not knowing how to get at that data and present it in a usable and understandable manner. Overcoming this is as simple as identifying what you need, and then reaching out to the Xzibits and Les Stroud's of the forensic community to get the job done. Rest assured, you're not the only one looking for that functionality...