#169: X-Ways Forensics,
X-Ways Investigator, WinHex 20.6 released
Jul 26, 2022 |
This mailing is to announce the release of
another update with many important improvements, v20.6. The
official release date was the 24th of July.
Customers please go to
https://www.x-ways.net/winhex/license.html
as always for the latest download instructions including current log-in
data, details about their licenses and potentially upgrade/renewal offers.
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access to it already if eligible.
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release of that version.
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What's new in v20.6?
(please note that most
changes affect X-Ways Forensics only)
Picture Analysis
-
The pixel filter dialog window was redesigned for
improved understanding of how it works.
-
There is now a small button on the right-hand side of
the "Picture analysis and processing" dialog window. Clicking that
button will show user interface controls for usage of PhotoDNA and
Excire PhotoAI, even if the functionality is unavailable, to give you an
idea of how these modules can be used. PhotoDNA is provided for free to
users in law enforcement agencies. Excire PhotoAI is commercially
available and described
here.
-
Ability to analyze pictures in HEIC format with
Excire PhotoAI.
-
Ability to choose the minimum resolution of pictures
that should be analyzed with Excire PhotoAI. The previous minimum was
224x224 pixels. If you are interested only in high quality digital
photos, you can save time by increasing this minimum a lot. If you are
also interested in low resolution photos, including thumbnails (for
example because you think thumbnails are sometimes all you can find of
incriminating photos), you can use a lower minimum. The absolute minimum
accepted is 48x48 pixels, but it is not recommended to go much lower
than 80x80 as detection errors will be more frequent if the picture
quality is very bad.
-
Pictures can now be automatically categorized as
irrelevant or notable using Excire PhotoAI. In the
extensive hierarchy
of identifiable objects you can select individual objects or entire
subtrees that render a picture irrelevant from your point of view, such
as any kinds of animals, plants, sports, musical instruments etc.
Automatically categorizing pictures as irrelevant based on detected
image content is subject to two extra conditions: A certain minimum
confidence and a certain minimum resolution in KP.
-
To reduce the number of report tables associations
generated using Excire PhotoAI, within irrelevant subtrees you can
choose to not output findings at a lower level. If for example the
subtree "Animal" is marked as irrelevant, then if a photo shows an
identifiable butterfly, you won't get the report tables "Butterfly" and
"Insect", but only "Animal". (Optionally you can get to see in the
Comment column which exact animal was identified.)
-
You can define what renders a picture notable for
you, such as nudity ("act"), vehicles, children, text etc. "Notable"
always overrides "irrelevant" when in doubt, if for example dogs are
marked as important in a particular case, but animals in general are
still marked as irrelevant. The next release of Excire PhotoAI might add
detection of guns, powdery substances, pills and pornography.
-
Logical AND combinations are supported when
categorizing photos as notable based on content detected by Excire
PhotoAI. To add a new AND combination, you select the first object name,
click the AND button, then select the second object name, and click the
AND button again. If you have misclicked, exit the dialog window via
Cancel OR simply remove the checkmark in front of your accidental AND
combination so that it will not be remembered when you click OK. Two AND
combinations are predefined in fresh installations that are meant to
assist in searches for child pornography. You can combine any items in
the tree, not only those from the bottom-most level that are represented
by file icons. Irrelevant and notable detections are defined in these
two text files: "Excire Irrelevant.txt" and "Excire Notable.txt".
-
Option to conveniently access the keyword list of
Excire PhotoAI and see the translation of internal object names to
friendly designations in English, German, Spanish, Italian or French
(depending on the current user interface language), by clicking the Edit
button in the categorization window for Excire. For example, photos
identified as act photography can be described as "nudity" instead of
"act", if you simply change the word after the comma. You may need to
restart X-Ways Forensics to see the effect.
Picture Display
-
The internal graphics display library was updated.
-
Better support for some PNG pictures with
transparency.
-
Changed the way thumbnails are created for the case
report, for file types supported by the internal graphics display
library. Among other file types this affects Photoshop PSD, which
apparently cannot be properly rendered by the 64-bit edition of the
viewer component, but by the internal graphics display library.
-
Applying Exif orientation metadata in Preview mode,
for the View command, in the gallery, for OCR and for Excire PhotoAI was
partially revised and is now optional and controlled by a 3-state
checkbox. If fully checked, the Exif orientation is strictly applied. If
half checked (the previous behavior and still the default), it is not
applied if X-Ways Forensics thinks it is most likely correct to not
(further) rotate or flip the picture.
-
Improved Exif orientation compliance in the gallery.
In particular, thumbnails and low-resolution alternatives embedded in
JPEG files now inherit the Exif orientation from their parent files.
Metadata Extraction
-
The Relevance scale for PNG files is now comparable
to that of JPEG files, so that sorting files of both types by relevance
gives a more plausible result now.
-
The compression level of PNG files is now output in
the internal metadata in Details mode. It also affects the relevance
computation. The conditions "trailing data" and "incomplete" (also in
Details mode) are new for PNG files.
-
Fixed a problem with false detection of a scanner as
the generating device of PNG files.
-
If the IFD GPS field in Exif metadata is available,
but empty, or if it contains unvalid coordinates, this is an irregular
situation, different from the IFD GPS not being present at all, and
often means that the GPS data have been removed retroactively. It is now
reflected as "GPS format: NaN", where NaN means "not a number".
-
Fixed a rare situation in which a geolocation was not
output previously.
-
Generator signature concept for JPEG pictures
revised. The number of error rates was reduced to less than 0.1%, by
avoiding hash collisions (one signature matching two devices). This may
be noticeable when dealing with Samsung Galaxy devices.
-
The Summary table in Details mode for JPEG files now
specifies the confidence with which the generating device type was
identified.
-
Users may now specify a minimum confidence in % that
they require for the identification of generating device types of JPEG and
PNG pictures.
-
Mention of AMPF (presumably for "Apple Multi Picture
Format") in the JFIF header in Details mode.
Directory Browser
-
Improved readability of tooltips of cells in the
directory browser that represent very long text without line breaks,
e.g. comments.
-
The number of characters extracted from a file (be it
via text decoding or OCR) is now shown in the Description column (if the
box "other" is checked in the Notation options of the Description
column), and with the filter you can require a certain minimum number of
characters (like 5 or 10, 255 at most), for example to avoid pictures in
which a few characters have been recognized merely erroneously, i.e.
pictures that not actually do contain text.
-
Directory browser option to display the start offset
of the data of a file in the First Sector column instead of the number
of the first sector. This is more precise information and available for
most files. The title of the column will be changed accordingly in most
places of the user interface. The offset can optionally be made a
physical offset (from the point of view of the physical disk/image if
shown in a partition) just like the sector number can be made a physical
sector number. The filter of that column expects numbers of the same
meaning as shown in the directory browser (i.e. either offsets or
sectors, either logical or physical), and in the same notation (decimal
for sector numbers, decimal or hexadecimal for offsets).
-
The directory browser context menu command "Find
duplicates in list" can now also identify duplicates based on exact
identical start offsets instead of just identical start sectors if the
"First sector" column is populated with offsets.
-
The Hash Category column, which shows which files are
considered irrelevant or notable, has been renamed "Categorization".
Hash database matching is just one method to populate this column. Files
can also be designated as irrelevant or notable by X-Tensions, by
adopting data from evidence file containers, now in v20.6 also simply
using the directory browser context menu, and more.
-
The former "Category" column is now named "Type
Category", analogous to "Type Status" and "Type Description".
Usability
-
You can now rename any directory browser column to
your liking, for example in order to keep continuity in the user
interface between earlier and future versions, or for compatibility in
data transfers (e.g. Export List command), or because a certain column
title has not been translated to your preferred Latin-based user
interface language and you would like to see your own translation of the
English title, or because you prefer to see "Attributes" instead of the
abbreviation "Attr.", etc. In the dialog window with the directory
browser options you can simply right-click a column title for that, and
will then be given the opportunity to replace the title with your own
wording.
-
In fact many more text fragments (strings) in the
user interface are now customizable, through this menu command: Help |
Setup | UI Text Adjustments. You would need to identify the exact
standard text fragment to replace and provide your own version of it. If
the text that you are looking for is not found and you don't know
exactly how it is stored internally, you can search for it in the file
"language.dat". Your customizations are stored in the file "UI Text
Adjustments.txt" and can be shared with other users. The file can
presumably be used in future versions as well, as long as the original
text fragments remain the same. It simply consists of one adjustment per
line, with the original text first and the replacement second, delimited
by a tab character (meaning those few original texts that already
contain a tab character cannot be adjusted). You may also edit that file
manually. Please note that the translations of non-Latin languages are
available as simple text files and can thus be changed in those files
much more directly.
-
Ability to automatically resume certain operations
after a crash (an involuntary program termination), without any user
intervention. This is a new setting in Options | Security. The currently
supported operations are the stages "file header signature search" and
"processing of individual files" of volume snapshot refinement when
invoked from the main menu or the command line or by adding evidence
objects to a case. Following a crash, these operations will be resumed
at a point that depends on when the volume snapshot was last saved.
(That in turn depends on the auto-save interval in the case properties
because whenever the case is saved, the volume snapshots of all open
evidence objects are saved as well. You can also save the case manually
while volume snapshots are being refined.) If it is not clear which
particular file has triggered a crash because you were running the
operation with additional threads, then the operation will be resumed
first with no additional threads. With some luck, that will not trigger
the crash again. If it does, the operation is resumed once more. Once
the exact file is identified, it will be skipped automatically. In case
of a crash during the file header signature search, the sector that
triggered the creation of a problematic file will be skipped.
-
Only in Preview and Beta releases, you can simulate
crashes if you wish to observe, test, or demonstrate this new automatic
work-around, for example because you wish to benefit from it when
running X-Ways Forensics more or less automatically with command line
parameters, and need to react to the situation where one instance of
X-Ways Forensics disappears and is immediately replaced by another
instance that you didn't start yourself. For the simulation, you provide
the name of a file that you want to trigger a crash in the supported
operations. The filename should be rather unique and target ideally just
one file that you know is in the initial volume snapshot or that you
expect to be added to the refined volume snapshot. It's case-sensitive.
Note that if you have X-Ways Forensics assign names based on
incrementing numbers to carved files, and you make it simulate a crash
with a carved file whose name is expected to be 012345.jpg, then even if
X-Ways Forensics successfully learns to avoid the sector where that file
is found in the file header signature search, the next carved file after
that might be named 012345.jpg as well (depending on the file type),
triggering yet another crash. Unique names of carved files are those
derived from the intelligent naming option (like "Canon DIGITAL IXUS 950
IS 2007-07-01 12:01:46.jpg") or from the option to name files based on
start sectors. To simulate a random, non-repeatable crash, you can
simply terminate X-Ways Forensics with the Windows Task Manager. v20.6
Beta 5 will remain available for a few weeks in case you need this
feature.
-
The "Uncover embedded data in various file types"
functionality now takes extra precautions not to produce duplicates of
files that were already carved by the file header signature search. More
precisely, its output will replace corresponding carved files in the
volume snapshot. The internal IDs of the carved files will remain the
same, but additional metadata may become available (such as
path/representation as a child object of the parent file, presumed
original filename, more correct file size etc.). With the usual
settings, this affects a considerable number of sector-aligned files,
from example in the Chrome browser cache.
-
Makes a note in the report of how report table items
are sorted.
-
Reminds users of the paths where hash databases are
stored when managing those hash databases.
-
The more complex version of the dialog window that
allows you to manage report tables and report table association now also
has a button to remove associations with the selected report tables.
User Interface
-
Ability to create two copies of an image file when
imaging from the command line. The path of the second copy, if desired,
may be appended after the path of the first copy, delimited by a forward
slash. Example: "|e01|Z:\First Copy.e01/V:\Second Copy.e01|Image
description|Examiner name".
-
RVS:~ in the command line refines the volume
snapshots of all evidence objects of a case, while RVS:~+ now refines
the volume snapshots of only newly added evidence objects (added since
the case was opened).
-
The user interface now shows improved instructions
for the reconstruction of certain Linux MD RAID variants.
-
The settings of the file header signature search are
now accessible from within the refine volume snapshot dialog window via
a "..." button, just like all the other subsettings, and like most of
them are usually now shown only on demand.
File Type Support
-
New option to accelerate various operations such as
volume snapshot refinement, logical searches, and especially the
optional dynamic context preview rendering around search hits in the
search hit list, by keeping more decompressed contents of file archives
in the volume snapshot cache. This option can be found in Options |
Volume Snapshot. It generally accelerates opening files in archives
again after the first time, especially nested archives.
The volume snapshot cache could become very large that way. It can be
discarded optionally whenever closing the data window if you like
(useful if you are done dealing with that evidence object for the
moment, or done with the entire case), and that is a case-specific
setting in the case properties. Once discarded, files can get cached
again afterwards at any time if/when they are opened again, if the
option for that is active. If the box for caching is half checked, that
means only nested archives are cached, similar to how compressed TAR
archives were in previous versions.
-
Clicking files in non-nested archives of the type zip
in the directory browser in Partition/Volume mode now causes jumps
directly to the respective zip record. More precisely to the filename
part of that record, to make the contained file better distinguishable
from its parent (also in terms of the 1st sector/Offset column). The
actual start of the record is already sufficiently highlighted by the
automatic signature recognition.
Searching
-
Now filters out leading white spaces resulting from
OCR text recognition.
-
A new option in Options | Viewer Programs makes
X-Ways Forensics ignore OCR-derived text if it does not contain at least
x contiguous useful characters. Such OCR results will not be
stored/output/copied/indexed/searched. This is beneficial if you apply
OCR to unknown/random/ordinary pictures (i.e. not known textual data),
to reduce the number of files that later will (misleadingly) respond to
the Description filter for files with OCR-derived text or for which
child objects are (unnecessarily) created by the "Copy: Extracted Text"
function etc. A "useful" character is defined here as a character with
an ASCII/Unicode value of 0x30 or higher. That means whitespaces <=0x20
are not counted, and neither are the printable characters
!=#$%&'()*+,-.& (0x21-0x2F range) because some of them are occasionally
misdetected in random pixels. All real letters in any language count,
and so do numbers ("0" through "9").
-
Logical searches remember if OCR was applied to
pictures unsuccessfully (meaning with no resulting text) so that
subsequent searches with OCR enabled will quickly skip those files.
-
Warns users about spaces at the end of search terms
(e.g. resulting from copy & paste).
File System Support
-
Improved representation of HFS+ file systems with
redundant inactive catalog entries: Duplicate entries in the Catalog (one inactive
and one active) for the same file or directory (same ID, same name) are
apparently created under Linux, under certain circumstances. In newly
taken volume snapshots now usually only the active one will be included.
-
HFS+: If an inactive Catalog entry and an active
entry was found for the same directory (same ID, same name) and both
were included in the volume snapshot, in newly taken volume snapshots
the content of that directory will be shown for the existing directory,
and not randomly in one of the two.
-
Option to restrict the search for NTFS FILE records
(part of the particularly thorough file system data structure search) to
the currently defined block. (If no block is defined, the search will be
carried out in all sectors of the volume as usually.)
-
The kind of data structure to be found at the
designated file system offset is now printed right in the "File system
offset" column, for files and directories in NTFS.
-
Option to define a fallback code page for Ext* file
systems in the case properties, or even enforce a non-standard code
page, by half-checking or fully checking the box next to the second
case-specific code page in the case properties. That code page will be
used to decode filenames and directory names that are not encoded in
UTF-8 (the Linux default), which may be the case in some legacy systems,
or other purpose-built environments where encodings other than UTF-8
were specified.
Miscellaneous
-
The "Event Log Events.txt" config file now accepts a
line beginning (1st column position) with a semicolon to signify a
comment line. Obviously this can be used either to remove lines from
parsing or to add comments to particular sections. The configuration
file now accepts an optional fourth column that can be used to add a
plain text comment to the Event's Description column.
-
"Event Log Events.txt" now contains some explanations
as comments and has an example of a comment that is taken over into the
event description in the event list.
-
Exporting and importing selected report tables
to/from text files now include the descriptions in addition to just the
report table names.
-
The list of sectors to omit during the file header
signature search can now comprise 16 sector numbers per evidence object
instead of just 8.
-
Option to automatically categorize FuzZyDoc matching
documents as notable.
-
Unicode filename support in the "Wipe Securely"
function.
-
X-Tension API: The XWF_OutputMessage() function now
accepts the flag 0x8, which directs the message to the Output window, as
opposed to the Messages window, where users may want to select and
copy text and where no [XT] prefix is inserted to distinguish between
internal messages and messages from X-Tensions.
-
The program help and the user manual were updated.
-
Many minor improvements.
What is planned for the
next release of Excire PhotoAI?
-
Identification of the following objects/content in
photos: guns, powdery substances, pills, pornography.
Changes of service releases of 20.5
-
SR-1: The table of generating devices was updated.
-
SR-1: Some new video generator signatures.
-
SR-1: Some more format variants added for the device
type "Video publishing".
-
SR-1: Structure types are now computed for the file
types XLS, WEBP, and WAV.
-
SR-1: More formats supported for filename analysis.
-
SR-1: Keyboard shortcut assignments in the report
table association dialog did not always work in v20.5. That was fixed.
-
SR-2: Improved Unicode support for EVTX processing.
-
SR-2: The definitions in "Event Log Events.txt" were
not applied completely when processing .evtx event logs since v20.4
SR-6. That was fixed.
-
SR-2: Fixed unintended dependency of the alternative
e-mail presentation in the case report on the setting in Options |
Viewer Programs.
-
SR-2: Originally WofCompressed files in evidence file
containers could not be opened for reading. That was fixed.
-
SR-2: The particularly thorough file system data
structure search in NTFS now skips some volume areas that could only
result in unnecessary duplicate findings, and grouping orphaned files
now always happens in virtual directories that have a connection to the
root directory via the virtual "Path unknown" directory.
-
SR-2: Fixed some report table management functions
for the new optional report table listing in alphabetical order.
-
SR-2: Clarified supported file types in online Excire
product description. Clarified supported file types for face definitions
in marker-help.txt in the Excire package. Face marking now accepts
supported picture files with any filename extension or without filename
extension.
-
SR-3: The directory browser context menu command to
copy extracted text to various output channels had encoding issues with
some settings. That was fixed.
-
SR-3: The alternative e-mail preview did not present
Date and Recipient fields in some rare cases. That was fixed.
-
SR-3: Fixed occasional inability to preview
compressed Prefetch files in v20.5.
-
SR-3: Fixed sorting partitions by size in the
directory browser.
-
SR-3: Fixed a user interface error that could occur
in some installations in v20.5 SR-2.
-
SR-4: Some minor improvements and fixes.
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Carl-Diem-Str. 32 32257 Bünde Germany
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