Windows forensics
THM Room: Windows Forensics

Organisation X desktop

One of the Desktops in the research lab at Organisation X is suspected to have been accessed by someone unauthorized. Although they generally have only one user account per Desktop, there were multiple user accounts observed on this system. It is also suspected that the system was connected to some network drive, and a USB device was connected to the system. The triage data from the system was collected and placed on the attached VM. Can you help Organisation X with finding answers to the below questions?

Note: When loading registry hives in RegistryExplorer, it will caution us that the hives are dirty. Point RegistryExplorer to the .LOG1 and .LOG2 files with the same filename as the registry hive. It will automatically integrate the transaction logs and create a ‘clean’ hive. Once we tell RegistryExplorer where to save the clean hive, we can use that for our analysis, and we won’t need to load the dirty hives anymore. RegistryExplorer will guide you through this process.

How many user created accounts are present on the system?

SAM users
Answer: 3

What is the username of the account that has never been logged in?

Answer: thm-user2

What’s the password hint for the user THM-4n6?

Answer: count

When was the file ‘Changelog.txt’ accessed?

NTUSER.DAT RecentDocs
Answer: 2021-11-24 18:18:48

What is the complete path from where the python 3.8.2 installer was run?

NTUSER.DAT UserAssist
Answer: Z:\setups\python-3.8.2.exe

When was the USB device with the friendly name ‘USB’ last connected?

SOFTWARE Devices
Get the GUID.

Load the SYSTEM hive and clean it. Look up the GUID in USBSTOR:

SYSTEM USBSTOR
Answer: 2021–11–24 18:40:06