RE: Announcement: Microsoft Windows XP Hash Set - File State Changes after Rebooting - XP Net, XP Home, XP Pro

From: John Howie (JHowieat_private)
Date: Sun Aug 04 2002 - 11:45:54 PDT

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    Larry,
    
    I am curious. Did you investigate the nature of the files whose state
    had changed? I reviewed your list and did not find any surprises. Most
    of the files were users' profiles (more later) and the registry files,
    along with some debug and system state snapshot information. This is all
    documented by Microsoft in the KB, the Resource Kit, and other sources.
    However, your work is an extremely useful validation of Microsoft's
    documentation.
    
    I suspect the user SUT's profile in your XP Home and Pro tests changed
    not because of the reboot, but because someone logged in as that user.
    Your data may be flawed here. Can you confirm if you actually logged on
    as a SUT in-between reboots? The Local Service and Network Service
    accounts were added to XP, and are not present in Windows 2000 or
    earlier versions of Windows.
    
    John
    
    -----Original Message-----
    From: Larry.Leibrockat_private
    [mailto:Larry.Leibrockat_private] 
    Sent: Friday, August 02, 2002 12:20 PM
    Subject: Announcement: Microsoft Windows XP Hash Set - File State
    Changes after Rebooting - XP Net, XP Home, XP Pro
    
    Colleagues,
    
    The University of Texas McCombs Business School has completed an
    experimental research project dealing with the known Windows XP variants
    - file enumeration, signatures and state changes after normal rebooting.
    
    
    This research contains the MD5 and SHA1 digital signatures for all files
    in the default XP installation.  The file set constitute the "known
    good" XP files.  This work is a basis for the clinical digital evidence
    examination of systems that may be suspected with compromised -
    potentially malicious - Trojan binaries.  The work also enumerates those
    specific files that are changed in terms of time/dates after every
    Windows XP Restart.
    
    I want to note that the work was done by three excellent University of
    Texas students with special interest in digital forensics. I wish to
    thank these students, Dell and Microsoft Corporations for supporting
    this research particularly in this homeland defense - counter-terrorism
    era.
    
    We hope IT professionals, IT security and forensics specialists find
    this research of value.
    
    Please go to http://praetor.bus.utexas.edu/leibrock/projectfiles/ for
    the final report and enumerated file set for this research effort.
    
    Larry
    
    ________________________________________________________________________
    ____
    
    Larry Leibrock, Ph.D Associate Dean, Chief Technology Officer 
    McCombs School of Business Administration 
    21st and Speedway Street - The University of Texas 
    Austin, Texas 78712-1178 
    email Larry.Leibrockat_private  
    public key at http://praetor.bus.utexas.edu 
    Voice (512) 471-1650 Fax (512)232-1831 
    SkyPager 1-800-858-4316 
    
    
    
    
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