Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Links

OpenLiveView
Tim Vidas has posted OpenLV, an update to the popular LiveView tool that many of use have used before. When conducting an investigation, there are a number of ways to access acquired images, such as via any number of analysis frameworks (DFF, ProDiscover, Autopsy, etc.) that provide a great deal of functionality for interacting with data.  There are tools for mounting an acquired image as a read-only volume (FTK Imager, etc.), but OpenLV allows you to boot the acquired image.  This can provide a great deal of visibility into the system, allowing the investigator to see what the intruder saw, interact with the system the way the intruder interacted with it, and even verify malware autostart functionality.

Be sure to check out the DFRWS Proceedings, written by Tim, Matthew Geiger, and Brian Kaplan.

EVTXtract
The other day I was answering a question about Windows Event Log analysis, and I ran across Willi Ballenthin's tool, EVTXtract (PDF here).  This tool allows an analyst to recover deleted Windows Event Log records.  The Windows Event Log (.evtx) files follow a binary structure that's much different from the Event Log (.evt) files on Windows XP and 2003, but deleted records can apparently be recovered, at least in some cases.

ThunderBird Parser
Mari has shared her ThunderBird Parser.  Her blog post has some great information...she talks about what issue she faced and how she chose to address it by writing her own code.  Doing this not only helped her understand the underlying data on much more intimate level, but it also opened that understanding up to other analysts.

Conferences
My conference attendance changed recently, and I am no longer a member of Suzanne Widup's author panel at the SANS DFIR Summit in Austin, TX.  I was really looking forward to speaking on the panel (I've written a book or two), and discussing various topics around writing DFIR books.  In fact, we'd already started addressing some questions in my blog, and I was really looking forward to hearing and addressing other questions.

My not attending the summit has nothing whatsoever to do with any review of my book, and honestly, I'm more than a little shocked that someone would think that, let alone say it out loud to others.

Brian Carrier has opened up the call for papers for the OSDFCon, to be held in Herndon, VA, on 5 Nov. This has always been a great conference to attend (see here), and needs more practitioners to submit presentations.  In fact, I've recommended to Mari that she submit to the conference to give a presentation on the ThunderBird email parser, or any of the other tools she's written.  I've already submitted two presentation ideas.

I'm also looking for thoughts and ideas for other conferences to which I can submit to the CfP.  CEIC is out because it's already come and gone.  If anyone has any thoughts regarding a conference (or conferences) that are specific to DFIR, and include topics on addressing targeted threats, I'd greatly appreciate it if you'd comment here or drop me an email.  Thanks.

1 comment:

43nsicbot said...

what a bummer, i was looking forward to your participation at the DFIR summit.
there is also derbycon or archc0n that is geared towards dfir, and are a bit like bsides (smaller conferences) and both are accepting CFPs. not sure what your thoughts are on those.