[This article is a continuation of my Forensic Friday series. Every Friday I will provide a short post on a forensic topic of interest or PowerForensics functionality (such as cmdlet descriptions, use cases, and details about lesser known features). Subscribe to Invoke-IR so you don’t miss a Forensic Friday!]
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Now back to your regularly scheduled programming! Yesterday, Vijay (@vakasapu on Twitter) asked if we are taking feature requests (specifically regarding autoruns like features) for PowerForensics.
Let me start by saying that we are very interested in community involvement! If you have ideas to make PowerForensics better, please let me know via email (jared@invoke-ir.com) or github. While PowerForensics does not currently support the extensive list of Auto Start Extensibility Points (ASEP), we do currently support a few of the more common auto start locations. This week I want to introduce Get-ForensicRunKey which parses the registry for entries in the numerous system and user based "run" keys. This cmdlet is built on top of PowerForensics' MFT and Registry Parser, so all of this data is gathered from a live system without relying on the Window's API.@jaredcatkinson @mattifestation are you taking requests for new features? If so, would be great to have an autoruns equivalent module.— Vijay (@vakasapu) March 31, 2016
Common Use
By default, this cmdlet parses the system SOFTWARE hive and all NTUSER.DAT hives on the system’s C: volume, but can be pointed at any logical volume. Individual hives (including exported hives) can be parsed using the -HivePath parameter in order to perform offline analysis. I’ve listed a few examples below.
Parse system and user hives for Run Key Persistence:
Get-ForensicRunKey -VolumeName C: | Format-List
Parse the system SOFTWARE hive for Run Key persistence:
Get-ForensicRunKey -HivePath ‘C:\Windows\System32\config\SOFTWARE’ | Format-List
