No Partition Table? No Problem

Warning: Veteran forensics professionals probably already know this stuff. Posting for those newer to the field. All are welcome to read and comment, however.

So you've got a disk or maybe just the image of a disk and your forensic tools say there are no partitions on it. What now? Windows isn't going to mount it, so how do we see if any files are on the disk? Some Windows based forensic tools (X-Ways Forensics) will probably be able to identify any lost partitions on the disk, but you still can't mount it natively. Fortunately, there are still ways to get at the data, if it's there at all. Using skills I learned in SANS Forensics 508, I was successful in doing all I needed to do.

The hard drive I'm working with is from a friend's computer. He asked me to troubleshoot, or perhaps just shoot it as it had suddenly stopped booting up.  On Patch Tuesday, the installed Avast Antivirus flagged some files as rootkits and asked to remove them, which my friend allowed. Avast notified him to reboot in order to finish the disinfection. When rebooting, the computer stops after the POST screen and advises there is no boot device.

Windows Disk Management in the management console showed the entire disk as being unallocated. I made a raw image of the drive and am investigating the cause. As part of that, I wanted to mount the image in order to conduct antivirus scans, since Avast had reported rootkits.

Since my friend's computer was unable to find the operating system when trying to boot, I loaded the image into WinHex and navigated to byte offset 446 to look at the partition table. I found the entire table was gone, right down to the 55AA normally found at the end of the table at offset 510 and 511.

So, is all hope lost? Nope. I knew this to be a fairly new computer with Windows XP as the only operating system. In WinHex, I searched for NTFS to try to find the start of a partition. As expected, I found the formerly active partition at Sector 63.

I opened the SANS Forensics SIFT Workstation (ver. 2.14) in VMware Workstation and connected the disk my image was stored on to it through the Shared Folders option. The SIFT Workstation, for those who don't know, is a ready made forensic work environment in a VMware virtual machine. An .iso file to create a live CD is also available.

Knowing the partition started at Sector 63, I knew it should be easy to mount it in Linux and it was. At the command line, I navigated to the disk where my image was located like this:

cd /home/sansforensics/Desktop/VMware-Shared-Drive/disk

There I found my image, named image.001. Before attempting to mount, I decided to use the mmls tool from the Sleuth Kit to see if it could recognize a partition in the image. Even using the sector offset option, mmls still couldn't find any partition.

So, I decided it was time to attempt to mount the partition I knew was in the image. At the command line, I typed the following:

mount -t ntfs-3g -o loop,ro,show_sys_files,streams_interface=windows,offset=32256 ./image.001 /mnt/windows_mount

A few explanations of that command line are probably in order. For those unfamiliar with the mount command, it may seem odd I specified an offset of 32256 instead of 63. The mount command does not work with sectors. Rather, it works with bytes. Knowing each sector was most likely 512 bytes and that the partition started on sector 63, you must multiply the number of sectors times the bytes per sector: 512 x 63=32256.

Also, show_sys_files allows you to see all the Windows "meta" files.

The streams_interface=windows option allows you to view Alternate Data Streams in Linux using the ntfs-3g driver just as you would in Windows.

The mount location I specified, /mnt/windows_mount is a location already existing in the SIFT Workstation for mounting images. One of the great things about this is the /mnt folders and the /cases folder are all shared via the network and you can access them from your host machine as network locations.

Anyway, the procedure outlined above worked like a charm. The partition on the image mounted immediately and I found the filesystem within that partition was intact. I was able to navigate it in Linux, as well as accessing it through the network from my host Windows machine.

I mapped a drive letter on my host to the /mnt so I could easily access this partition from either the SIFT or run other Windows based tools on it from the host machine. The great thing about this is I was able to run log2timeline-sift in the SIFT environment on my image while scanning the mounted image with antivirus from the host Windows machine, all at the same time.

Now, as I said, there is no way to mount this disk (or image) natively in Windows, at least as far as I know. However, it can be done with other tools. I tried FTK Imager, since it is normally able to mount partitions within image files. However, it was unable to mount this one without the partition table being present. IMDisk, a fantastic free tool, allows you to mount images such as this and specify the byte offset of the partition, just like the Linux mount command. It is a Windows based GUI and is extremely easy to use. I tried it and it successfully mounted the image to an accessible drive letter. There are probably other tools that would work, but I didn't have any others to try.

My investigation into this computer is still ongoing. I will post later what, if anything, I find out. I hope I'm able to determine the cause of this incident and get it fixed. I hope this post made a little sense. I'm always happy to respond to questions, so feel free to comment below.

Malware Forensics Field Guide for Windows

I don't write many book reviews because I don't feel like I'm very good at doing them. However, I've been fortunate to read some very good books lately and wanted to tell you about them. First, I posted my review of Practical Packet Analysis a few days ago and now I want to tell you about another excellent book: Malware Forensics Field Guide for Windows Systems.

For those who like to cut to the chase, my recommendation is you should buy this book. Now. It's that good.

As readers of this blog know, I enjoy learning about malware investigation and forensics. I get excited anytime I hear a new book on malware investigation is coming out. I almost never pre-order books, preferring to just wait till they're actually available. This was one of those books I just knew was going to be good and I wanted it as soon as possible so, for a change, I actually pre-ordered.

Malware Forensics Field Guide for Windows was written by the authors of Malware Forensics, Investigating and Analyzing Malicious Code which came out in 2008. In both cases, the publisher is Syngress, one of my favorite publishers for tech books. As with the first book, this one is also written by Cameron H. Malin, Eoghan Casey and James M. Aquilina. Curtis W. Rose served as the technical editor.

This is not a "second edition" of the previous book. While it occasionally makes reference to the first book, it is it's own separate work. As it's name implies, this book is meant to take with you when you go out on the job and includes checklists, sample field notes and more. I'll say more about them later, but the checklists, field notes and guides are just outstanding.

The book has six chapters, which doesn't sound like much, but each chapter is pretty good sized and chock full of great information. Chapter One is Malware Incident Response. The authors do a great job of covering the collection of volatile data, process information and non-volatile data. What's nice here is they don't just tell you what you should do, they also tell you how to do it. Step by step guides in many cases guide the reader through important investigative processes. The authors are careful to guide you in scientifically sound means of investigation instead of just turning you loose with the tools.

My personal background is in dead disk forensics, not incident response, although I'd love to be involved in IR work. I found Chapter One very valuable to me as a relative newcomer to incident response. The included field notes and interview questions are a huge help to newcomer and veteran alike, helping you make sure you've "covered all the bases" in your response. The checklists are just great, reminding you of things you should always check during your assessment of a system, such as collecting volatile data, checking  Windows Prefetch files and so on.

Also included is a chapter on memory forensics. Many exciting things have occurred in the area of memory forensics as of late, led by the great Volatility Framework team, as well as Matthieu Suiche and his Moonsols company (win32dd, etc). Other cool software has come from the likes of Mandiant with its Redline tool and HBGary's Responder software. These days, a book like this couldn't be written without talking about memory forensics and the authors do an excellent job of covering the material. Use of the tools mentioned above and others is covered in great detail. As with most of the other chapters, this chapter ends with a Pitfalls to Avoid section, a checklist and interview questions section, a toolbox section (extra detail on the tools mentioned in the chapter) and a selected reading section directing the reader to more information on the topic of that chapter.

A chapter devoted to "traditional" post-mortem forensics is next. This chapter takes you through the investigation of a suspected victim computer, concentrating on disk based artifacts. Web history, OS and application logs, the Windows Registry and prefetch files are among the sources of possible evidence discussed. Other things like possible autostart locations and keyword searching are also talked about. Something I really liked about this chapter, as well as throughout the whole book, is the way the authors continue to stress the need to use a repeatable, scientific process to conduct your investigation and the need to document it. Further, throughout the book they talk about the importance of validating your results.

Legal considerations when conducting forensic investigations is covered in Chapter 4. I was glad to see this chapter included in the book, as I believe it's far too easy in the heat of the moment to just start doing the fun part (the investigation) without giving consideration to how the law views what you're doing. Federal wiretap laws, HIPAA, PCI, state laws and much more are covered in this chapter. It's nicely done and helps the reader to appreciate the potential legal pitfalls of this work. A very large book could be dedicated to just the legal concerns we face, so obviously not every possible legal topic is covered here, but the authors do a great job of getting the point across and helping the reader to have a good basic idea of the law, as well as giving the reader a better idea of what questions they should answer before proceeding with an investigation.

Next is File Identification and Profiling. I enjoyed the entire book, but this may have been my favorite chapter. Again, extensive note-taking and correlation of findings are stressed here. The focus of this chapter is on studying a suspect file, finding out what it is, what it does and so on. Hashing, file headers and file metadata are discussed, along with much more. The section on file obfuscation was very helpful to me, as it talked about various ways of hiding or obfuscating the functionality of files through the use of packing and encryption. The chapter wraps up with tips on profiling pdf, Microsoft Office and Windows .chm files.

Analysis of a malware specimen is the focus of the final chapter and wow, it is awesome. The authors provide a huge amount of great information on methods for performing static and dynamic analysis of specimen files. As in the other chapters, tools are suggested and step-by-step guidance is given for some. Also talked about are automated "sandbox" style testing using Buster Sandbox Analyzer, ZeroWine and online sandboxes like the ones available from GFI and Norman. Means of defeating file obfuscation are also given. There is far more to this chapter than I could possibly tell you about here.

As previously mentioned, each chapter (except the legal chapter) ends with sample field notes, interview questions, a toolbox (details about tools discussed in the chapter) and suggested reading. The notes and checklists are great, but there isn't much you can do with them in a book. Fortunately, you can go to the book's website and request electronic copies by clicking the Field Notes link at the top of the page. I received the five pdf files of notes and checklists by email after requesting them. The pdf's are in full color and very readable. They're an excellent resource and I know I'll use them.

In conclusion, I want to say I truly enjoyed reading this book and learned a lot from it. I truly only touched on highlights in this review. There is so much more to this book than I've mentioned. I strongly recommend it to anyone whose job entails responding to malware related incidents, as well as to all who simply have an interest in the subject. It is well written, easy to follow and chock full of information that I know I'll refer back to many times. I see the authors have another book, Malware Forensics Field Guide for Linux Systems, scheduled to come out soon. I guarantee I'll be buying that one too.

Book review: Practical Packet Analysis

This is a copy of the review I put on Amazon tonight for the book Practical Packet Analysis (2nd edition). I didn't say this on Amazon, but I would recommend you buy the book straight from the publisher, No Starch Press, because you get the electronic version for free with your purchase of the physical book. Anyway, here's my review:

After reading this book, I have a much better understanding of the capabilities of Wireshark, but I really learned so much more. The author does a great job introducing the reader to basic networking concepts, such as the OSI model, data encapsulation, ports, MAC and IP addresses and so on. Chris Sanders does an excellent job teaching the basics and moving on from there in a way that even those very new to the material can keep up.

Networking has always been something I've known just a little about, but I've never been anywhere close to an expert. While I knew about setting up a basic Windows network, that was about it. I took SANS Network Forensics (FOR 558) last year, which uses Wireshark some and learned a lot. Looking back, I can see how much better off I would have been had I read Practical Packet Analysis before the class. So much of what was discussed in class is covered in PPA in clear, concise explanations that would have made it easier for me when I took the forensics course.

This really is one of the best tech books I've ever read. I don't say that lightly, as I've read many good IT and computer forensics books. It is well written and easy to follow. The author has .pcap files available for download from the publisher website so the reader can follow along with the examples in the book. To me, this made learning the material that much easier, allowing me to see first hand what was being taught.

Another thing I like about this and other books from the publisher, No Starch Press, are the graphics. Screenshots of computer screens are often very difficult to make out in other publishers books, but I've noticed in all of my No Starch books they are easy to see.

Practical Packet Analysis is a must-read for anyone wanting to learn how to sniff and analyze packets. Highly recommended!

I am currently working on a review of Malware Forensics Field Guide for Windows Systems. I hope to finish and post it sometime next week.