Ubuntu Manpage: foremost - Recover files using their headers, footers, and data structures

NAME

       foremost - Recover files using their headers, footers, and data structures

SYNOPSIS

       foremost  [-h]  [-V]  [-d] [-vqwQT] [-b <blocksize>] [-o <dir>] [-t <type>] [-s <num>] [-i
       <file>]

BUILTIN FORMATS

Recover files from a disk image based on file types specified by the user using the -t
switch.

jpg Support for the JFIF and Exif formats including implementations used in modern
digital cameras.

gif

png

bmp Support for windows bmp format.

avi

exe Support for Windows PE binaries, will extract DLL and EXE files along with their
compile times.

mpg Support for most MPEG files (must begin with 0x000001BA)

wav

riff This will extract AVI and RIFF since they use the same file format (RIFF). note
faster than running each separately.

wmv Note may also extract wma files as they have similar format.

mov

pdf

ole This will grab any file using the OLE file structure. This includes PowerPoint,
Word, Excel, Access, and StarWriter

doc Note it is more efficient to run OLE as you get more bang for your buck. If you
wish to ignore all other ole files then use this.

zip Note is will extract .jar files as well because they use a similar format. Open
Office docs are just zip'd XML files so they are extracted as well. These include
SXW, SXC, SXI, and SX? for undetermined OpenOffice files. Office 2007 files are
also XML based (PPTX,DOCX,XLSX)

rar

htm

cpp C source code detection, note this is primitive and may generate documents other
than C code.

mp4 Support for MP4 files.

all Run all pre-defined extraction methods. [Default if no -t is specified]

DESCRIPTION

Recover files from a disk image based on headers and footers specified by the user.

-h Show a help screen and exit.

-V Show copyright information and exit.

-d Turn on indirect block detection, this works well for Unix file systems.

-T Time stamp the output directory so you don't have to delete the output dir when
running multiple times.

-v Enables verbose mode. This causes more information regarding the current state of
the program to be displayed on the screen, and is highly recommended.

-q Enables quick mode. In quick mode, only the start of each sector is searched for
matching headers. That is, the header is searched only up to the length of the
longest header. The rest of the sector, usually about 500 bytes, is ignored. This
mode makes foremost run considerably faster, but it may cause you to miss files
that are embedded in other files. For example, using quick mode you will not be
able to find JPEG images embedded in Microsoft Word documents.

Quick mode should not be used when examining NTFS file systems. Because NTFS will
store small files inside the Master File Table, these files will be missed during
quick mode.

-Q Enables Quiet mode. Most error messages will be suppressed.

-w Enables write audit only mode. No files will be extracted.

-a Enables write all headers, perform no error detection in terms of corrupted files.

-b number
Allows you to specify the block size used in foremost. This is relevant for file
naming and quick searches. The default is 512. ie. foremost -b 1024
image.dd

-k number
Allows you to specify the chunk size used in foremost. This can improve speed if
you have enough RAM to fit the image in. It reduces the checking that occurs
between chunks of the buffer. For example if you had > 500MB of RAM.
ie. foremost -k 500 image.dd

-i file
The file is used as the input file. If no input file is specified or the input
file cannot be read then stdin is used.

-o directory
Recovered files are written to the directory directory.

-c file
Sets the configuration file to use. If none is specified, the file "foremost.conf"
from the current directory is used, if that doesn't exist then "/etc/foremost.conf"
is used. The format for the configuration file is described in the default
configuration file included with this program. See the CONFIGURATION FILE section
below for more information.

-s number
Skips number blocks in the input file before beginning the search for headers.
ie. foremost -s 512 -t jpeg -i /dev/hda1

CONFIGURATION FILE
The configuration file is used to control what types of files foremost searches
for. A sample configuration file, foremost.conf, is included with this
distribution. For each file type, the configuration file describes the file's
extension, whether the header and footer are case sensitive, the maximum file size,
and the header and footer for the file. The footer field is optional, but header,
size, case sensitivity, and extension are not!

Any line that begins with a pound sign is considered a comment and ignored. Thus,
to skip a file type just put a pound sign at the beginning of that line

Headers and footers are decoded before use. To specify a value in hexadecimal use
\x[0-f][0-f], and for octal use \[1-9][1-9][1-9]. Spaces can be represented by \s.
Example: "\x4F\123\I\sCCI" decodes to "OSI CCI".

To match any single character (aka a wildcard) use a ?. If you need to search for
the ? character, you will need to change the wildcard line *and* every occurrence
of the old wildcard character in the configuration file. Do not forget those hex
and octal values! ? is equal to \x3f and \063.

There is a sample set of headers in the README file.

EXAMPLES

       Search for jpeg format skipping the first 100 blocks
              foremost -s 100 -t jpg -i image.dd

       Only generate an audit file, and print to the screen (verbose mode)
              foremost -av image.dd

       Search all defined types
              foremost -t all -i image.dd

       Search for gif and pdf's
              foremost -t gif,pdf -i image.dd

       Search for office documents and jpeg files in a Unix file system in verbose mode.
              foremost -vd -t ole,jpeg -i image.dd

       Run the default case
              foremost image.dd

AUTHORS

       Original  Code  written  by Special Agent Kris Kendall and Special Agent Jesse Kornblum of
       the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations.

       Modification by Nick Mikus a Research Associate at the Naval  Postgraduate  School  Center
       for  Information  Systems Security Studies and Research.  The modification of Foremost was
       part of a masters thesis at NPS.

BUGS

       When compiling foremost on systems with versions of glibc 2.1.x or  older,  you  will  get
       some (harmless) compiler warnings regarding the implicit declaration of fseeko and ftello.
       You can safely ignore these warnings.

REPORTING BUGS

       Because Foremost could be used to obtain evidence for criminal prosecutions, we  take  all
       bug  reports  very  seriously.  Any  bug  that  jeopardizes the forensic integrity of this
       program could have serious consequenses. When submitting a bug report,  please  include  a
       description of the problem, how you found it, and your contact information.

       Send bug reports to:
       namikus AT users d0t sf d0t net

COPYRIGHT

       This  program  is  a  work  of the US Government. In accordance with 17 USC 105, copyright
       protection is not available for any work of the US Government.

       This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO  warranty;  not
       even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.