Characterization of the windows kernel version variability for accurate memory analysis

Memory analysis is an established technique for malware analysis and is increasingly used for incident response. However, in most incident response situations, the responder often has no control over the precise version of the operating system that must be responded to. It is therefore critical to ensure that memory analysis tools are able to work with a wide range of OS kernel versions, as found in the wild. This paper characterizes the properties of different Windows kernel versions and their relevance to memory analysis. By collecting a large number of kernel binaries we characterize how struct offsets change with versions. We find that although struct layout is mostly stable across major and minor kernel versions, kernel global offsets vary greatly with version. We develop a “profile indexing” technique to rapidly detect the exact kernel version present in a memory image. We can therefore directly use known kernel global offsets and do not need to guess those by scanning techniques. We demonstrate that struct offsets can be rapidly deduced from analysis of kernel pool allocations, as well as by automatic disassembly of binary functions. As an example of an undocumented kernel driver, we use the win32k.sys GUI subsystem driver and develop a robust technique for combining both profile constants and reversed struct offsets into accurate profiles, detected using a profile index.