The traversal method for user address space in Windows 10 system based on VAD tree

基于VAD树的Windows 10用户地址空间遍历方法

School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin University of Science and Technology, Harbin 150080, China

Received: 12 July 2021

Abstract

The existing traversal method for user address space in the memory forensic research is only applicable to Windows XP and Windows 7 32-bit system. Windows 10 64-bit system is currently used by most users, which is the main target of network attackers. A method to traverse Windows 10 user address space based on VAD(virtual address descriptor) tree is proposed. The memory kernel and user address space metadata of Windows 10 64-bit system was located. The related metadata such as mapping files, shared memory, heap, stack and reserved system structures were parsed and matched with the information in VAD tree nodes. The starting address, ending address, used size, allocating protection, memory type and details of each memory area were output. The results show that the method is compatible with all versions of Windows 10 64-bit system and can effectively traverse common structures when dealing with processes with different complexity.

摘要

内存取证研究中, 现存的用户地址空间遍历方法只适用于Windows XP和Windows 7的32位系统, 而Windows 10 64位系统已经被个人用户广泛使用, 是网络攻击者的主要目标。提出了一种基于虚拟地址描述符(virtual address descriptor, VAD)树的Windows 10用户地址空间遍历方法。方法对Windows 10 64位系统内存内核和用户地址空间元数据进行定位, 解析内存映射文件、共享内存、堆栈缓冲区和保留系统结构等相关元数据, 与VAD树中的节点信息相匹配, 最后描述每一段内存区域的分配起止地址、占用大小、分配保护、内存类型和详细信息。测试结果表明, 方法能够兼容目前所有版本的Windows 10 64位系统, 在应对不同复杂程度的进程时能有效遍历常见的结构。