Search file activity with Forensic Search

Overview

Forensic Search is a powerful search interface that enables security teams to monitor and investigate suspicious file activity. Forensic Search provides detailed visibility about files:

• Stored on user devices
• Stored in corporate cloud services, such as Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive
• Synced to personal cloud services, such as Box, Dropbox, iCloud, and OneDrive
• Moved to removable media
• Sent as email attachments in Microsoft Office 365 and Gmail
• Sent to printers (Mac and Linux only)

This enables security personnel to gain a clearer understanding of file activity throughout the organization.

For specific search examples, see Forensic Search use cases.

Before you begin

Review your detection settings:

• Incydr Basic, Advanced, and Gov F1: Follow the steps in Enable endpoint data collection for the legacy agent for at least one organization in your Code42 environment.
• Incydr Professional, Enterprise, Horizon, and Gov F2: File metadata collection is always on, but see the Endpoint data collection reference guide to enable or disable detection for specific exfiltration vectors.

Perform a search

Forensic Search reports on file events detected by Code42. A file event is any activity observed for a file. For example, creating, modifying, renaming, moving, or deleting a file generates an event for that file. Events are reported for both user and system actions.

To search file events:

1. Sign in to the Code42 console.
   You must have a role with permissions that allow access to Forensic Search.
2. Select Forensic Search > Search.
3. Choose a date range. 
4. Select a search filter, operator, and search value.

5. (Optional) Click the + icon to add additional search criteria, then repeat steps 4-6. Click the x icon to remove search criteria.
   Search results only return events that match all selected criteria.
6. Click Search. If search results are already displayed, click Update Search.

Review search results

1. From the list of search results, click View details  to show all details for a file event. See the File event metadata reference for more details about specific event attributes.
2. Click Download file to download the file contents.
3. Click the menu icon  next to any field for available actions.
   • For Event ID, choose:
     • Copy link to event details to copy a link to these event details to your clipboard. This link enables you to easily share specific events with others (who have the required permissions to access Forensic Search), or to save the URL for your own future reference.
     • Copy event ID to copy the string value of the Event ID itself. Use this value to search for this event again later.
   • For all other fields, choose:
     • Add value to current search to update the current search to only include results matching this value
     • Add value to new search to start a new search containing this value
     • Copy value to copy the value to your clipboard

4. Add an event to a case.
   • To add a single event, click Add to case  for the event you want to add.
   • To add multiple events at once:
     1. Close the Event details.
     2. Select the checkbox for each event you want to add.
     3. Click the Add to case icon  in the upper right.
5. Select Modify columns to select which columns appear in the results.
6. Click Save As to save the current search filters and criteria (search results are not saved). This is useful if you plan to perform the search again later. 
7. Click Export Results to download the current search results as a CSV file for additional analysis.

Additional considerations

• Search results return file events for all organizations in your Code42 environment.
• File event details are retained and searchable according to the event data retention period specified in your product plan. For example, if your retention period is 90 days, events are available for 90 days after the Date Observed. 
• Searches allow up to 1,024 values per request.
• Observed times for file events are reported in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Similarly, when conducting a search for a specific time range, user-entered times are evaluated as UTC, not local time.
• When paging through search results, each page load refreshes the search results. If your search query includes the current date, search results may change as you change pages.
• From the time a file event is detected on a device, it typically takes up to 30 minutes for the event to appear in search results. However, it may take up to 75 minutes for file events to appear if a file is uploaded to an unknown destination, to a cloud data connection configured for monitoring by Code42, or if the Destination name lists multiple possibilities. For more details on timing for different event types, see Expected time ranges for events to appear.
• The Code42 agent on each user device is configured to send file events to the Code42 cloud every five minutes. This has several implications for search results:
  • If a file is modified more than once during the five-minute window, the search results only display a single modification event.
  • If a file is created and then deleted within five minutes, the Created and Deleted events are captured and do appear in search results, but some file metadata may not be collected. If the same file is created and deleted multiple times in five minutes, a maximum of 25 events are captured for the file.
  • Device metadata, such as IP Address and Hostname, is collected once per five-minute interval for each batch of file events. File events reported in the same batch always report the same device metadata.
• Changes to filenames are reported in the search results as a Deleted event (for the old file name), immediately followed by a Created event (for the new file name).
• File changes that occur within one second of each other may not be detected. For example, if a file is created and then deleted in less than a second, these events may not appear in search results. This varies somewhat by operating system: Windows devices are more likely to capture events in quick succession (within milliseconds) than Mac devices.
• Updating a user's Code42 username does not update search results for existing events (events created prior to the change report the old username).
• In some rare scenarios, the Username may be blank or may display NAME_NOT_AVAILABLE.
• Because some cloud services provide on-demand file streaming, user devices may contain a shortcut file for every file the user has access to throughout the organization. MD5 and SHA256 hashes are not calculated for these shortcut files since they have no content. However, if your product plan includes one or more cloud service data sources (for example, Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive), hashes are available for the actual files stored in the cloud service.
• Google Drive cloud file events do not immediately appear when sharing with Google domains that are not configured with Code42.

• File metadata collection is not supported for per user installations. A single instance of the Code42 agent must be installed for all user accounts on the device. (Not applicable to Incydr Professional, Enterprise, Horizon, and Gov F2; per user installations are not available in these product plans.)
• File activity is monitored on the C: drive on Windows devices and the root of the file system on Mac and Linux devices, but /Volumes is not monitored on Macs.
• Linux devices have a default limit for the number of files and directories applications are allowed to monitor. This can impact the Code42 agent's ability to capture file events for all locations on the device. To increase this default limit, follow the steps in Linux real-time file watching errors.
• The File Created Date is not available for file events on Linux devices.
• If a device is offline, file events are collected and stored locally on the device. Offline devices can store up to 1 GB of file events locally, which is approximately one million events. For normal device use, this is enough to capture up to 100 days of offline file events. Once a network connection is available, these events are sent to the Code42 cloud. If a device is offline long enough to generate more than 1 GB of file events, some events may not be reported.

Related topics

• Forensic Search use cases
• File event metadata reference
• Enable endpoint data collection for the legacy agent
• File event exclusions
• Detect and respond to insider risks