Digital Forensics & Incident Response
  • Welcome
  • General Notes
    • Azure Blob storage with NGINX proxy
    • Install and Configure ZeroTier client
    • S3FS Fuse and MinIO
    • Enable nested VT-X/AMD-V
    • mitm proxy
    • Exploring Volume Shadow Copies Manually
    • Resize VMDK/VDI
    • Resize VMDK on ESXi
    • Convert raw to vmdk
    • Favicon hashing and hunting with Shodan
    • WinRM/RemotePS
    • MinIO/S3/R2 ghost files
    • Mount E01 containing VMDK/XFS from RHEL system
    • Disk images for various filesystems and configurations
      • ext4 with LVM and RAID5 (3 disks)
      • ZFS
      • UFS, FFS, BTRFS, XFS
      • ext4, LVM, and LUKS1/LUKS2
      • NTFS, FAT32, with BitLocker
      • NTFS, FAT32, exFAT with TrueCrypt, VeraCrypt
    • VirtualBox adapters greyed out
    • Exporting SQLite blob data from standalone SQLite database using command line tools
  • Microsoft Defender KQL
    • Introduction to KQL
  • Windows Forensics
    • PsExec
      • PsExec and NTUSER data
    • Security Patch/KB Install Date
  • Linux Forensics
    • Inspecting RPM/DEB packages
    • Common Locations
  • ESXi Forensics
    • Mount external USB device in ESXi hypervisor
    • Understanding ESXi
      • Partitions / Volumes
      • ESXi console / shell
      • Guest Virtual Machines
    • General Notes
    • Triage and Imaging
    • ESXi VMFS Exploration
    • Export OVF from ESXi using OVF Tool
    • Identification, acquisition, and examination of iSCSI LUNs and VMFS datastores
  • Memory Forensics
    • Volatility
      • Volatility3 core commands
      • Build Custom Linux Profile for Volatility
      • Generate custom profile using btf2json
      • Banners, isfinfo, and custom profiles
      • Volatility2 core commands
      • 3rd Party Plugins
    • Acquisition
      • ESXi / VMware Workstation snapshots
      • DumpIt
      • WinPMem
      • Linux / AVML
  • Incident Response
    • Ivanti Connect Secure Auth Bypass and Remote Code Authentication CVE-2024-21887
    • VirusTotal & hash lists
    • Unix-like Artifacts Collector (UAC)
      • Setup MinIO (object storage)
      • Create S3 pre-signed URL
      • UAC and pre-signed URLs
    • Acquiring Linux VPS via SSH
    • AVML dump to SMB / AWS
    • China Chopper webshell
    • Logging Powershell activities
    • Compromised UniFi Controller
    • AnyDesk Remote Access
    • Mounting UFS VMDK from NetScaler/Citrix ADC
  • iOS Forensics
    • Checkm8 / checkra1n acquisitions/extractions
  • CTF / Challenges
    • 13Cubed Linux memory forensics
    • Compromised Windows Server 2022 (simulation)
      • FTK Imager
      • Autopsy Forensics
      • Plaso
      • Events Ripper
      • EZ tools
    • DEFCON 2019 forensics
    • Tomcat shells
    • Magnet Weekly CTF
      • Magnet CTF Week 0
      • Magnet CTF Week 1
    • DFIR Madness CTF
      • Case 001 - Szechuan Sauce
  • Log Files
    • Windows
      • Generating Log Timelines
  • Malware Analysis
    • Identifying UPX packed ELF, decompressing, fixing, and analysing Linux malware
    • PDF Analysis
  • Walking the VAD tree
  • OpenCTI
    • What is CTI/OpenCTI?
    • Setting up OpenCTI
    • Container Management
    • Configure Connectors
  • Vulnerability Management
    • Setting Up Nessus (Essentials)
    • Troubleshooting
  • Privacy
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  1. ESXi Forensics

ESXi VMFS Exploration

Scenario: Provided with E01 of disks from an ESXi server. You need to examine the files contained within a guest VM which was hosted on the ESXi server.

For this, I setup ESXi 7.0 as a guest in VMWare Workstation 15.

Downloaded Windows 1909 Upgrade ISO.

Ran through ESXi setup, provisioned a 40GB datastore as 'ISO'.

Uploaded Windows 1909 ISO file to ISO datastore.

Created Windows 10 guest virtual machine within ESXi.

Booted Windows 10 guest from ISO datastore and installed Windows 10.

Created 'mydocument.txt' on Windows 10 desktop (under 'Andrew' profile).

  1. Mount E01 with your preferred tool (can be with Arsenal Image Mounter or similar).

  2. Datastore will present as separate partition

  3. Acquire/export partition as E01/RAW

  4. Mount new image (from partition) as a physical disk.

  5. Create VMDK from PhysicalDisk

    VBoxManage.exe internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename "C:\vmfs\part8.vmdk" -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDriveX
  6. Attach new VMDK to Linux host

  7. Install VMFS6-tools and libguestfs-tools

    sudo apt-get install vmfs6-tools
    fdisk -l
    sudo mkdir /mnt/sdb && sudo mkdir /mnt/vmdk
  8. Mount partition

    sudo vmfs6-fuse /dev/sdb /mnt/sdb

9. Mount target VMDK (for guest Windows 10 VM) and explore

guestmount -a Windows 10-flat.vmdk -m /dev/sdb --ro /mnt/vmdk
(or specify partition)
guestmount -a Windows 10-flat.vmdk -m /dev/sdb --rw /mnt/vmdk
PreviousTriage and ImagingNextExport OVF from ESXi using OVF Tool

Last updated 3 years ago

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