Analysis Playbooks: USB

In 2005, Cory Altheide and I published the first peer-reviewed paper to address tracking USB devices on Windows systems. Over the years, it’s been pretty amazing to see not only the artifacts expand and evolve, but to also see folks pick up the baton and carry on with describing what amounts to a “playbook” for developing this information as part of an investigation. Not only did malware such as Raspberry Robin propagate via USB devices, but with the rise of other devices that could be attached via a USB connection, but use different protocols, it became more important to operationalize this analysis in a playbook. 

After all, why not take the inefficient, error-prone, purely manual aspects out of the parsing by automating it?

Morad R. put together a series of posts that outline different data/artifact sources you can examine to identify USB devices that had been connected to the endpoint, as well as attribute the use of the devices to a particular user. This series of posts illustrates some steps that begin the process of pulling back the veil, if you will, to unraveling the use of USB devices on Windows systems. While there is definitely more to be done and shared, the important common factor across the posts is the use of timelines. 

USB Forensics, pt 1: Unmasking the connected device – Focuses on the

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