![]() ![]() As of this writing, while it appears there is some work in progress to update both Hibr2Bin and Volatility to update the decompression methods, neither of these tools can successfully fully decompress Windows 8+ Hibernation files. This, in turn, rendered existing decompression tools severely hindered without a rewrite to account for the changes. However, beginning in Windows 8/Server 2012, Microsoft changed things up, namely adding a Huffman encoding variant and changing the data structures a bit. Starting in Windows XP, Microsoft began using the Xpress compression algorithm with a defined data structure of which many tools (including the aforementioned Hibr2Bin and Volatility) had down pat to properly decompress and extract/display the contained artifacts. Windows hibernation files are compressed at shutdown. ![]() So, what gives? Does Microsoft simply no longer store (as many) artifacts in there anymore? I mean, if our trusted tools can’t identify/extract it, it’s surely not there, right? Well, while it would be easy to simply move on and accept the loss of artifacts, I’d like to take the time to dig a bit deeper and find out what is going on here. However, since Windows 8, you may (or may not) have noticed that the number of artifacts extracted by the usual methods have at times ranged from substantially less to nearly nonexistent. For years, many in the DFIR community have pillaged the hibernation file for a variety of artifacts, ranging from extraction of simple strings to the use of more specialized analysis tools like Mathieu Suiche’s Hibr2Bin and Volatility. Windows Hibernation files from a hibernated (or sometimes simply shutdown) machine can be a wealth of information in investigations, often containing a nearly complete memory image of what was running on the system prior to hibernation (shutdown). ![]()
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