Look for suspicious activity by monitoring file accesses.
Suppose you're looking at the list of processes in the task manager one day after noticing some odd behavior on your workstation, and you notice a process you haven't seen before. Well, what do you do now? If you were running something other than Windows, you might try to determine what the process is doing by looking at the files it has open. Unfortunately, Windows doesn't provide a tool to do this.
Sysinternals makes an excellent tool called Handle, which is available for free at http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/handle.shtml. Handle is a lot like lsof [Hack #8], but it can list many other types of operating resources, including threads, events, and semaphores. It can also display open registry keys and IOCompletion structures.
Running handle without any command-line arguments will list all open file handles on the system. You can also specify a filename, which will list the processes that are currently accessing it, by typing this:
C:\> handle
filename
Or you can list only files that are opened by a particular process?in this case Internet Explorer:
C:\> handle -p iexplore Handle v2.10 Copyright (C) 1997-2003 Mark Russinovich Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- IEXPLORE.EXE pid: 688 PLUNDER\andrew 98: Section \BaseNamedObjects\MTXCOMM_MEMORY_MAPPED_FILE 9c: Section \BaseNamedObjects\MtxWndList 12c: Section \BaseNamedObjects\__R_0000000000d4_SMem_ _ 18c: File C:\Documents and Settings\andrew\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\index.dat 198: Section \BaseNamedObjects\C:_Documents and Settings_andrew_Local Settings_Temporary Internet Files_Content.IE5_index.dat_3194880 1a0: File C:\Documents and Settings\andrew\Cookies\index.dat 1a8: File C:\Documents and Settings\andrew\Local Settings\History\History.IE5\ index.dat 1ac: Section \BaseNamedObjects\C:_Documents and Settings_andrew_Local Settings_History_History.IE5_index.dat_245760 1b8: Section \BaseNamedObjects\C:_Documents and Settings_andrew_Cookies_index.dat_81920 228: Section \BaseNamedObjects\UrlZonesSM_andrew 2a4: Section \BaseNamedObjects\SENS Information Cache 540: File C:\Documents and Settings\andrew\Application Data\Microsoft\SystemCertificates\My 574: File C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop 5b4: Section \BaseNamedObjects\mmGlobalPnpInfo 5cc: File C:\WINNT\system32\mshtml.tlb 614: Section \BaseNamedObjects\WDMAUD_Callbacks 640: File C:\WINNT\system32\Macromed\Flash\Flash.ocx 648: File C:\WINNT\system32\STDOLE2.TLB 6a4: File \Dfs 6b4: File C:\Documents and Settings\andrew\Desktop 6c8: File C:\Documents and Settings\andrew\Local Settings\ Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\Q5USFST0\softwareDownloadIndex[1].htm 70c: Section \BaseNamedObjects\MSIMGSIZECacheMap 758: File C:\WINNT\system32\iepeers.dll 75c: File C:\Documents and Settings\andrew\Desktop 770: Section \BaseNamedObjects\RotHintTable
If you want to find the Internet Explorer process that owns a resource with a partial name of handle, you could type:
C:\> handle -p iexplore handle Handle v2.10 Copyright (C) 1997-2003 Mark Russinovich Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com IEXPLORE.EXE pid: 1396 C:\Documents and Settings\andrew\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\H1EZGFSH\handle[1].htm
Additionally, if you wanted to list all types of resources, you could use the -a option. Handle is quite a powerful tool, and any of its command-line options can be mixed together to quickly narrow your search and find just what you want.