Memory Forensics

Memory forensics is rapidly becoming a critical part of all digital forensic investigations. The value of information stored within a computer’s memory is immense; failing to capture it could result in a substantial loss of evidence. However, it is becoming increasingly more common to find situations where standard memory acquisition tools do not work. The paper addresses how an investigator can capture the memory of a locked computer when authentication is not present. The proposed solution is to use a bootable memory acquisition tool, in this case, Passware Bootable Memory Imager. To enhance the findings, three different reboot methods will be tested to help identify what would happen if the recommended warm reboot is not possible. Using a warm reboot and a secure reboot, Passware Bootable Memory Imager was able to successfully acquire the memory of the locked machine, with the resulting captures being highly representative of the populated data. However, the memory samples collected after a cold reboot did not retain any populated data. These findings highlight that to capture the memory of a locked machine, the reboot method is highly successful, providing the correct method is followed.Memory forensics is rapidly becoming a critical part of all digital forensic investigations. The value of information stored within a computer’s memory is immense; failing to capture it could result in a substantial loss of evidence. However, it is becoming increasingly more common to find situations where standard memory acquisition tools do not work. The paper addresses how an investigator can capture the memory of a locked computer when authentication is not present. The proposed solution is to use a bootable memory acquisition tool, in this case, Passware Bootable Memory Imager. To enhance the findings, three different reboot methods will be tested to help identify what would happen if the recommended warm reboot is not possible. Using a warm reboot and a secure reboot, Passware Bootable Memory Imager was able to successfully acquire the memory of the locked machine, with the resulting captures being highly representative of the populated data. However, the memory samples collected after a cold reboot did not retain any populated data. These findings highlight that to capture the memory of a locked machine, the reboot method is highly successful, providing the correct method is followed

Analysing and Carving MS Word and PDF Files from RAM Images on Windows

In this study, a piece of software has been developed to recover the readable data by carving MS Word and PDF files from the RAM image. String searching, signature scanning, and data carving methods are used in the design of the software. The analysis was performed on a RAM image of 14 GB by using the software that was developed. The success rate for each file was determined by comparing the recovered data to the data in the original file. It was determined that the rate of data recovery decreases as the size of the MS Word or PDF files loaded onto RAM increases. Consequently, it is aimed to be an important example of obtaining electronic evidence from volatile data in forensic informatics with the proposed study

Memory forensics: comparing the correctness of memory captures from locked Windows 10 machines using different boot capture vectors

Memory forensics is rapidly becoming a critical part of all digital forensic investigations. The value of information stored within a computer memory is immense; failing to capture it could result in a substantial loss of evidence. However, it is becoming increasingly more common to find situations where standard memory acquisition tools do not work. The paper addresses how an investigator can capture the memory of a locked computer when authentication is not present. The proposed solution is to use a bootable memory acquisition tool, in this case, Passware Bootable Memory Imager. To enhance the findings, three different reboot methods will be tested to help identify what would happen if the recommended warm reboot is not possible. Using a warm reboot and a secure reboot, Passware Bootable Memory Imager was able to successfully acquire the memory of the locked machine, with the resulting captures being highly representative of the populated data. However, the memory samples collected after a cold reboot did not retain any populated data. These findings highlight that to capture the memory of a locked machine, the reboot method is highly successful, providing the correct method is followed

Hypnoguard: Protecting Secrets across Sleep-wake Cycles

Attackers can get physical control of a computer in sleep (S3/suspend-to-RAM), if it is lost, stolen, or the owner is being coerced. High-value memory-resident secrets, including disk encryption keys, and private signature/encryption keys for PGP, may be extracted (e.g., via cold-boot or DMA attacks), by physically accessing such a computer. Our goal is to alleviate threats of extracting secrets from a computer in sleep, without relying on an Internet-facing service. We propose Hypnoguard to protect all memory-resident OS/user data across S3 suspensions, by first performing an in-place full memory encryption before entering sleep, and then restoring the plaintext content at wakeup-time through an environment-bound, password-based authentication pro- cess. The memory encryption key is effectively “sealed” in a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip with the measurement of the execution environment supported by CPU’s trusted execution mode (e.g., Intel TXT, AMD-V/SVM). Password guessing within Hypnoguard may cause the memory content to be permanently inaccessible, while guessing without Hypnoguard is equivalent to brute-forcing a high- entropy key (due to TPM protection). We achieved full memory encryption/decryption in less than a second on a mainstream computer (Intel i7-4771 CPU with 8GB RAM, taking advantage of multi-core processing and AES-NI), an apparently acceptable delay for sleep-wake transitions. To the best of our knowledge, Hypnoguard provides the first wakeup-time secure environment for authentication and key unlocking, without requiring per-application changes

Preliminary Electrical Designs for CTEx and AFIT Satellite Ground Station

This thesis outlines the design of the electrical components for the space-based ChromoTomography Experiment (CTEx). CTEx is the next step in the development of high-speed chromotomography at the Air Force Institute of Technology. The electrical design of the system is challenging due to the large amount of data that is acquired by the imager and the limited resources that is inherent with space-based systems. Additional complication to the design is the need to know the angle of a spinning prism that is in the field of view very precisely for each image. Without this precise measurement any scene that is reconstructed from the data will be blurry and incomprehensible. This thesis also outlines how the control software for the CTEx space system should be created. The software ow is a balance of complex real time target pointing angles and simplicity to allow the system to function as quick as possible. This thesis also discusses the preliminary design for an AFIT satellite ground station based upon the design of the United States Air Force Academy\u27s ground station. The AFIT ground station will be capable of commanding and controlling satellites produced by USAFA and satellites produced by a burgeoning small satellite program at AFIT

RIGEX: Preliminary Design of a Rigidized Inflatable Get-Away-Special Experiment

As space structures grow in size and complexity, their weight and cost increase considerably. The use of inflatable and rigidizable structures offers drastic improvements in all areas of spacecraft design. The goal of this experiment is to verify and validate ground testing of inflation and rigidization methods for inflatable space structures. The Rigidized Inflatable Get-Away-Special Experiment is an autonomous, self-contained space shuttle experiment that will inflate and rigidize several structures. After inflation, the experiment will perform a structural analysis by exciting the rigidized structures and collecting vibration data. A systems engineering approach is utilized to make design decisions based on a total system and life-cycle perspective

An examination of the Asus WL-HDD 2.5 as a nepenthes malware collector

The Linksys WRT54g has been used as a host for network forensics tools for instance Snort for a long period of time. Whilst large corporations are already utilising network forensic tools, this paper demonstrates that it is quite feasible for a non-security specialist to track and capture malicious network traffic. This paper introduces the Asus Wireless Hard disk as a replacement for the popular Linksys WRT54g. Firstly, the Linksys router will be introduced detailing some of the research that was undertaken on the device over the years amongst the security community. It then briefly discusses malicious software and the impact this may have for a home user. The paper then outlines the trivial steps in setting up Nepenthes 0.1.7 (a malware collector) for the Asus WL-HDD 2.5 according to the Nepenthes and tests the feasibility of running the malware collector on the selected device. The paper then concludes on discussing the limitations of the device when attempting to execute Nepenthes

Authentication and Data Protection under Strong Adversarial Model

We are interested in addressing a series of existing and plausible threats to cybersecurity where the adversary possesses unconventional attack capabilities. Such unconventionality includes, in our exploration but not limited to, crowd-sourcing, physical/juridical coercion, substantial (but bounded) computational resources, malicious insiders, etc. Our studies show that unconventional adversaries can be counteracted with a special anchor of trust and/or a paradigm shift on a case-specific basis. Complementing cryptography, hardware security primitives are the last defense in the face of co-located (physical) and privileged (software) adversaries, hence serving as the special trust anchor. Examples of hardware primitives are architecture-shipped features (e.g., with CPU or chipsets), security chips or tokens, and certain features on peripheral/storage devices. We also propose changes of paradigm in conjunction with hardware primitives, such as containing attacks instead of counteracting, pretended compliance, and immunization instead of detection/prevention. In this thesis, we demonstrate how our philosophy is applied to cope with several exemplary scenarios of unconventional threats, and elaborate on the prototype systems we have implemented. Specifically, Gracewipe is designed for stealthy and verifiable secure deletion of on-disk user secrets under coercion; Hypnoguard protects in-RAM data when a computer is in sleep (ACPI S3) in case of various memory/guessing attacks; Uvauth mitigates large-scale human-assisted guessing attacks by receiving all login attempts in an indistinguishable manner, i.e., correct credentials in a legitimate session and incorrect ones in a plausible fake session; Inuksuk is proposed to protect user files against ransomware or other authorized tampering. It augments the hardware access control on self-encrypting drives with trusted execution to achieve data immunization. We have also extended the Gracewipe scenario to a network-based enterprise environment, aiming to address slightly different threats, e.g., malicious insiders. We believe the high-level methodology of these research topics can contribute to advancing the security research under strong adversarial assumptions, and the promotion of software-hardware orchestration in protecting execution integrity therein

Secure and safe virtualization-based framework for embedded systems development

Tese de Doutoramento - Programa Doutoral em Engenharia Electrónica e de Computadores (PDEEC)The Internet of Things (IoT) is here. Billions of smart, connected devices are proliferating at rapid pace in our key infrastructures, generating, processing and exchanging vast amounts of security-critical and privacy-sensitive data. This strong connectivity of IoT environments demands for a holistic, end-to-end security approach, addressing security and privacy risks across different abstraction levels: device, communications, cloud, and lifecycle managment. Security at the device level is being misconstrued as the addition of features in a late stage of the system development. Several software-based approaches such as microkernels, and virtualization have been used, but it is proven, per se, they fail in providing the desired security level. As a step towards the correct operation of these devices, it is imperative to extend them with new security-oriented technologies which guarantee security from the outset. This thesis aims to conceive and design a novel security and safety architecture for virtualized systems by 1) evaluating which technologies are key enablers for scalable and secure virtualization, 2) designing and implementing a fully-featured virtualization environment providing hardware isolation 3) investigating which "hard entities" can extend virtualization to guarantee the security requirements dictated by confidentiality, integrity, and availability, and 4) simplifying system configurability and integration through a design ecosystem supported by a domain-specific language. The developed artefacts demonstrate: 1) why ARM TrustZone is nowadays a reference technology for security, 2) how TrustZone can be adequately exploited for virtualization in different use-cases, 3) why the secure boot process, trusted execution environment and other hardware trust anchors are essential to establish and guarantee a complete root and chain of trust, and 4) how a domain-specific language enables easy design, integration and customization of a secure virtualized system assisted by the above mentioned building blocks.Vivemos na era da Internet das Coisas (IoT). Biliões de dispositivos inteligentes começam a proliferar nas nossas infraestruturas chave, levando ao processamento de avolumadas quantidades de dados privados e sensíveis. Esta forte conectividade inerente ao conceito IoT necessita de uma abordagem holística, em que os riscos de privacidade e segurança são abordados nas diferentes camadas de abstração: dispositivo, comunicações, nuvem e ciclo de vida. A segurança ao nível dos dispositivos tem sido erradamente assegurada pela inclusão de funcionalidades numa fase tardia do desenvolvimento. Têm sido utilizadas diversas abordagens de software, incluindo a virtualização, mas está provado que estas não conseguem garantir o nível de segurança desejado. De forma a garantir a correta operação dos dispositivos, é fundamental complementar os mesmos com novas tecnologias que promovem a segurança desde os primeiros estágios de desenvolvimento. Esta tese propõe, assim, o desenvolvimento de uma solução arquitetural inovadora para sistemas virtualizados seguros, contemplando 1) a avaliação de tecnologias chave que promovam tal realização, 2) a implementação de uma solução de virtualização garantindo isolamento por hardware, 3) a identificação de componentes que integrados permitirão complementar a virtualização para garantir os requisitos de segurança, e 4) a simplificação do processo de configuração e integração da solução através de um ecossistema suportado por uma linguagem de domínio específico. Os artefactos desenvolvidos demonstram: 1) o porquê da tecnologia ARM TrustZone ser uma tecnologia de referência para a segurança, 2) a efetividade desta tecnologia quando utilizada em diferentes domínios, 3) o porquê do processo seguro de inicialização, juntamente com um ambiente de execução seguro e outros componentes de hardware, serem essenciais para estabelecer uma cadeia de confiança, e 4) a viabilidade em utilizar uma linguagem de um domínio específico para configurar e integrar um ambiente virtualizado suportado pelos artefactos supramencionados