Finding Alternate Data Streams  (ADS) on the whole drive may be quite time consuming so in this quick post I will show you how to do it faster with HMFT.

As you probably know, the latest version of HMFT supports listing of basic attributes directly from $MFT – from both images and live systems. Amongst the features it currently supports is showing type of attribute and its name. Turns out, that this is enough information to find out what named DATA streams are hidden inside the FILE records – and this is essentially what ADSs are.

So…

First, let’s test how HMFT shows ADS-related data:

• First let’s create a few sample ADSs

echo > f:\test
echo > f:\test:ads
echo > f:\test:ads2
echo > f:\test:ads3

• Next, we run hmft over the drive and saving it to a file

hmft -l f: f_mft.txt

• Finally, let’s see the content of the file – scroll down to see file name, first unnamed DATA attribute that is then followed by 3 named DATA attributes – ADS names:

  [FILE]
    SignatureD                    = 1162627398
    OffsetToFixupArrayW           = 48
    NumberOfEntriesInFixupArrayW  = 3
    LogFileSequenceNumberQ        = 4204637
    SequenceValueW                = 1
    LinkCountW                    = 1
    OffsetToFirstAttributeW       = 56
    FlagsW                        = 1
    UsedSizeOfMFTEntryD           = 448
    AllocatedSizeOfMFTEntryD      = 1024
    FileReferenceToBaseRecordQ    = 0
    NextAttributeIdD              = 6
   --

    RESIDENT ATTRIBUTE
      AttributeTypeIdentifierD = 16
      LengthOfAttributeD       = 96
      NonResidentFlagB         = 0
      LengthOfNameB            = 0
      OffsetToNameW            = 0
      FlagsW                   = 0
      AttributeIdentifierW     = 0
      --
      SizeOfContentD          = 72
      OffsetToContentW        = 24
      --
        MFTA_STANDARD_INFORMATION
            CreationTimeQ         = 129938289425003390
            ModificationTimeQ     = 129938289502223390
            MFTModificationTimeQ  = 129938289502223390
            AccessTimeQ           = 129938289425003390
            FlagsD                = 32
            MaxNumOfVersionsD     = 0
            VersionNumberD        = 0
            ClassIdD              = 0
            OwnerIdD              = 0
            SecurityIdD           = 261
            QuotaQ                = 0
            USNQ                  = 0
            CreationTime (epoch)    = 1349355342
            ModificationTime (epoch)  = 1349355350
            MFTModificationTime (epoch)  = 1349355350
            AccessTime (epoch)           = 1349355342
   --

    RESIDENT ATTRIBUTE
      AttributeTypeIdentifierD = 48
      LengthOfAttributeD       = 104
      NonResidentFlagB         = 0
      LengthOfNameB            = 0
      OffsetToNameW            = 0
      FlagsW                   = 0
      AttributeIdentifierW     = 2
      --
      SizeOfContentD          = 74
      OffsetToContentW        = 24
      --
        MFTA_FILE_NAME
            ParentID6             = 5
            ParentUseIndexW       = 5
            CreationTimeQ         = 129938289425003390
            ModificationTimeQ     = 129938289425003390
            MFTModificationTimeQ  = 129938289425003390
            AccessTimeQ           = 129938289425003390
            CreationTime (epoch)    = 1349355342
            ModificationTime (epoch)  = 1349355342
            MFTModificationTime (epoch)  = 1349355342
            AccessTime (epoch)           = 1349355342
            AllocatedSizeQ        = 0
            RealSizeQ             = 0
            FlagsD                = 32
            ReparseValueD         = 0
            LengthOfNameB         = 4
            NameSpaceB            = 3
     FileName = test
   --

    RESIDENT ATTRIBUTE
      AttributeTypeIdentifierD = 128
      LengthOfAttributeD       = 40
      NonResidentFlagB         = 0
      LengthOfNameB            = 0
      OffsetToNameW            = 24
      FlagsW                   = 0
      AttributeIdentifierW     = 1
      --
      SizeOfContentD          = 13
      OffsetToContentW        = 24
      --
        MFTA_DATA
   --

    RESIDENT ATTRIBUTE
      AttributeTypeIdentifierD = 128
      LengthOfAttributeD       = 48
      NonResidentFlagB         = 0
      LengthOfNameB            = 3
      OffsetToNameW            = 24
      FlagsW                   = 0
      AttributeIdentifierW     = 3
      --
      SizeOfContentD          = 13
      OffsetToContentW        = 32
      --
        MFTA_DATA
    AttributeName = ads
   --

    RESIDENT ATTRIBUTE
      AttributeTypeIdentifierD = 128
      LengthOfAttributeD       = 48
      NonResidentFlagB         = 0
      LengthOfNameB            = 4
      OffsetToNameW            = 24
      FlagsW                   = 0
      AttributeIdentifierW     = 4
      --
      SizeOfContentD          = 13
      OffsetToContentW        = 32
      --
        MFTA_DATA
    AttributeName = ads2
   --

    RESIDENT ATTRIBUTE
      AttributeTypeIdentifierD = 128
      LengthOfAttributeD       = 48
      NonResidentFlagB         = 0
      LengthOfNameB            = 4
      OffsetToNameW            = 24
      FlagsW                   = 0
      AttributeIdentifierW     = 5
      --
      SizeOfContentD          = 13
      OffsetToContentW        = 32
      --
        MFTA_DATA
    AttributeName = ads3

• Knowing all this, we can quickly put together a perl script that can walk through the data and pick up all ADS from the output file:

use strict;
my $f='';
my $l='';
while (<>)
{
  s/[\r\n]+//g;
  $f = $1 if /FileName = (.+)$/;
  print "$f:$1\n" if ($l =~ /MFTA_DATA/&&/AttributeName = (.+)$/);
  $l = $_;
}

• Save it as ads.pl
• Run it using the following syntax

perl ads.pl <hmft output>

e.g.:

perl ads.pl f_mft.txt

The output for the example file system is:

$Repair:$Config
test:ads
test:ads2
test:ads3

I suggest you running a test on your local drives  – you are probably going to be quite surprised 🙂

Not only you may find plenty of files with ADS, but you may also get to know less-known good ADSs – many of them I have listed previously and a few more e.g. internal ADSs used by OS:

• $Info in $UpCase:$Info
• $Config in $Repair:$Config
• $Max in $UsnJrnl:$Max

and also MAC-related streams (resource forks) added by Safari  (kinda equivalents of IE’s Zone.Identifier)

• com.apple.quarantine
• com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms

Note on a small bug here: with a larger number of ADSs the ads.pl script will show incorrect entries as ADS attributes that don’t fit within one FILE record will be stored elsewhere and w/o FILENAME attribute, hence the associated file name will be incorrect. Some may be also stored under ATTRIBUTE_LIST that is not supported by HMFT yet.