Live Forensics – Extracting Credentials on Windows and Linux Systems

Authors

  • Liviu Itoafa Military Technical Academy

Keywords:

DPAPI, LSA, Protected Storage, registry, Chrome, Firefox, Ubuntu, gnome-keyring

Abstract

’Post-mortem’ analysis of a system can be greatly simplified if the correct information is gathered in the live analysis stage. In this paper I’ve described Windows’ data protection APIs available for developers, some simplified versions of the API (LSA Secrets, Protected Storage), different methods used by applications to store their passwords safely and comparisons between them.  As an example, I’ve built tools to dump passwords saved by browsers (Chrome, IE, Firefox) and an extractor of the login password (if available) from the registry. The basic concepts of how passwords may be stored apply to majority of applications that run on Windows and store passwords (protected or not) and understanding this makes possible recovery of other credentials also (messaging software, mail clients ...).

On the Linux side, I’ve analyzed a general method of storing passwords – keyrings, and the methods adopted by Chrome browser, and built extraction command line tools for both of them, in the form of a python script and a C++ application.

Author Biography

Liviu Itoafa, Military Technical Academy

Computer Science Department

References

Elie Burzstein, Jean Michel Picod, Recovering Windows Secrets and certificates offline, Black Hat 2010.

MSDN, PStore, - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb432403(v=vs.85).aspx

MSDN, DPAPI - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms995355.aspx

Security analysis in DPAPI, http://www.passcape.com/index.php?section=blog&cmd=details&id=20

DLL Export Viewer, http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/dll_export_viewer.html

Nirsoft forensic software - http://www.nirsoft.net/computer_forensic_software.html

SecurityXploded – Password Recovery Tools - http://securityxploded.com/password-recovery-tools.php

http://code.google.com/p/secrets/

Why does Google Chrome not have a master password? - http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/chrome/give-feature-feedback-and-suggestions/k6JmRoGJp5w

SQLite database engine – http://sqlite.org

KeePass Security features - http://keepass.info/help/base/security.html

Mozilla Network Security Services - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/pki/nss/

Boja, C., Security of Password and Data Managers for Internet Browsers, Proceedings of The 3rd International Conference on Security for Information Technology and Communications, SECITC'10, Bucharest, Romania, ASE Publishing House, pp. 209 – 220, ISBN 978-606-505-283-3

SapporoWorks - HTTP Basic

Authentication and auto-complete passwords in Internet Explorer 7, http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/458115/30/0/threaded

Opera Password Secrets - http://securityxploded.com/operapasswordsecrets.php

Gnome-keyring Security Philosophy - https://live.gnome.org/GnomeKeyring/SecurityPhilosophy

Gnome Keyring credentials dumper - http://code.google.com/p/secrets/source/browse/dump_keyrings.py

Downloads

Published

2012-09-30

How to Cite

Itoafa, L. (2012). Live Forensics – Extracting Credentials on Windows and Linux Systems. Journal of Mobile, Embedded and Distributed Systems, 4(3), 175-182. Retrieved from http://jmeds.eu/index.php/jmeds/article/view/80

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 3 (2012): Security of Digital Identities

Section

Articles

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