Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Windows 7 Recycle Bin EnScript

I recently received an email from a friend who I had worked closely with years ago and who I have always considered to be a mentor. Everyday we worked together he would challenge me and make me think about various forensic procedures and come up with innovative solutions. His name is Bruce Pixley and I miss working with him.

Bruce recently had a need to parse out some deleted files that were in the recycle bin of a Windows 7 image, but the corresponding $R files were gone. He restored several of the shadow volume instances and found several of the $I files, but the $R files were not present. He needed a way to parse just the $I index files and build a report.

Bruce ended up writing a simple EnScript to parse selected $I files in the recycle bin of a Vista/7 image. He sent me the EnScript to post as a learning process for others.

/*
Windows 7 Recycle Bin Report (Version: 1.0)
Select $I files found in the Windows 7 $Recycle.Bin folder that you want decoded
Enscript will create a tab-delimited file in the case export folder
Created by: Bruce W. Pixley, CISSP, EnCE
Date: 12/1/2010
*/

You can read the comments inside the EnScript for specific details of how he is parsing the data.

You can download a copy of the EnScript here


7 comments:

  1. Hi Lance

    Some years ago I had the privilege of attending an Internet and Email class in Pasadena which Bruce taught on his own.

    It was probably the best taught class I have ever attended and I agree with your sentiments about Bruce wholeheartedly

    Guidance lost a good instructor when they let him leave to go to another job

    Gary Probert
    Gwent Police UK

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  2. Beware the script above uses a variable of type int to store the deleted file size. If it's a large file, the script will display inaccurate values.

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  3. LT, thanks for info. Do you have a suggestion on how would you fix it?

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  4. We are now experiencing anomolies with it reporting incorrect deleted time. Confirmed by manually decoding the bytes containing the date/time. Any update expected to come?

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  5. I have updated the EnScript. Just download the update from the original link above.

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  6. I am getting an error when using this Enscript in Encase 7. The error indicates that EntryRoot is not a member of CaseClass.

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  7. @AxisForensics - This is an EnCase v6 EnScript.

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