Links

Malware in PDFs
As a responder and forensic analyst, one of the things I'm usually very interested in (in part, because customers want to know...) is determining how some malware (or someone) was first able to get on a system, or into an infrastructure...what was the Initial Infection Vector? I've posted about this before, and the SANS ISC had an interesting post yesterday, as well, regarding malware in PDF files. This is but one IIV, but

Does this really matter beyond simply determining the IIV for malware or an intrusion? I'd say...yes, it does. But why is that? Well, consider this...this likely started small, with someone getting into the infrastructure, and then progressed from there.

PDF files are one way in...Brian Krebs pointed out another IIV recently, which apparently uses the hcp:// protocol to take advantage of an issue in the HextoNum function and allow an attacker to run arbitrary commands. MS's solution/workaround for the time being is to simply delete a Registry key. More information on exploiting the vulnerability can be seen here (the fact that the vulnerability is actively being exploited is mentioned here)...this is a very interesting read, and I would be interested to see what artifacts there may be to the use of an exploit as described in the post. Don's mentioned other artifacts associated with exploiting compiled HelpHTML files, in particular how CHM functionality can be turned into a malware dropper. But this is a bit different, so I'd be interested to see what analysts may be able to find out.

Also, if anyone knows of a tool or process for parsing hh.dat files, please let me know.

Free Tools
For those interested, here's a list of free forensic tools at ForensicControl.com. I've seen where folks have looked for this sort of thing, and the disadvantage of having lists like this out there is that...well...they're they're out there, and not in one centralized location. I know some folks have really liked the list of network security tools posted at InSecure.org, and it doesn't take much to create something like that at other sites. For example, consider posting something on the ForensicsWiki.

Speaking of tools, Claus has a great post from the 4th that mentions some updates to various tools, including ImDisk, Network Monitor, and some nice remote control utilities. If you're analyzing Windows 2008 or Windows 7 systems, you might want to take a look at AppCrashView from Nirsoft...I've been able to find a good deal of corroborating data in Dr. Watson logs on Windows XP/2003 systems, and this looks like it might be just as useful, if not more so.

Shadow Analyzer
There's been some press lately about a tool called "Shadow Analyzer", developed by Lee Whitfield and Mark McKinnon, which is to be used to access files in Volume Shadow Copies. I also see that this has been talked about on the CyberCrime101 podcast...should be a good listen!

On that note, ShadowExplorer is at version 0.7.

Parsing NTFS Journal Files
Seth recently posted a Python script for parsing NTFS Journal Transaction Log files (ie, $USNJRNL:$J files). I don't know about others but I've been doing a lot of a parsing of NTFS-related files, whether it's the MFT itself, or running $LogFile through BinText.

I'm sure that one of the things that would help with folks adopting tools like this, particularly those that may require Python or Perl being installed, is an explanation or examples of how the information can be useful to an examiner/analyst. So, if folks do find that these tools are useful, post something that lets others know why/how you used it, and what you found that supported your examination goals.