The Windows Registry

When it comes to analyzing and understanding the Windows Registry, where do we go, as an industry, to get the information we need?

Why does this even matter?

Well, an understanding of the Registry can provide insight into the target (admin, malicious insider, cyber
criminal, nation-state threat actor) by what they do, what they don’t do, and how they go about doing it.

The Registry can be used to control a great deal of functionality and access on endpoints, going beyond just persistence. Various keys and values within the Registry can determine what we can see or not see, what we can do or not do, 

For example, let’s say a threat actor enables RDP on an endpoint…this is something we see quite often. This could even be a Windows 10 or Windows 11 laptop; that is, it doesn’t just have to be a server. When they enable it, do they also create a user account, add it to a group that has remote access, and then hide the new user account from the Welcome Screen? Do they enable Sticky Keys? Regardless of the various settings that they enable or disable, how do they go about doing so? Manually, or via a batch file or script of some kind?

The settings enabled or disabled, and the manner employed, can tell you something about the target. Are they prepared? Was it likely that they’d conducted some recon and developed some situational awareness of the environment, or as we see with many RaaS offerings, was it more of a “spray-and-pray” approach? If they used sc.exe (or some other means) to disable services, was that list specific and unique to the environment, or was it more of a “wish list” where many of the listed

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