Question

Network File Deletion

Asked by: JC_OM

We recently had a lot of files on a network share deleted. The only files that were deleted were the ones open up to everybody, so it's difficult to narrow it down to a specific users, but we need to track who did it, as they obviously went through and deleted what they could. Is there anyway on a network share, which is located on a server to find out who did it and track them?

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Asked On
2009-11-04 at 17:22:30ID24873213
Tags

Network

,

Deleted

,

Recovery

Topics

File Servers

,

Windows Networking

,

Digital Forensics

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
14

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Answers

 

by: dstewartjrPosted on 2009-11-04 at 17:32:48ID: 25746004

Only if you had auditing enabled on the folder prior to the deletion

 

by: JC_OMPosted on 2009-11-04 at 17:33:38ID: 25746008

so there is absolutely no other way to find out? I'm not to sure if we were auditing them.

 

by: samenglishPosted on 2009-11-04 at 17:37:14ID: 25746021

you could probably narrow it down further by looking through the event log on that server, but I don't know if you can "track" who did it unless you had some object auditing in place.

 

by: dstewartjrPosted on 2009-11-04 at 17:38:02ID: 25746027

 

by: JC_OMPosted on 2009-11-04 at 17:38:57ID: 25746030

we do have user logon and logoff auditing on, would this be a fair indication if I can narrow down the time it happened as to who did It?

 

by: samenglishPosted on 2009-11-04 at 17:40:19ID: 25746037

yes, but you could only narrow it down to whoever was connected at that time.

 

by: dstewartjrPosted on 2009-11-04 at 17:42:56ID: 25746050

back to the beginning, unless it was previously enabled(auditing) you are not gonna have any provable evidence.

 

by: JC_OMPosted on 2009-11-04 at 17:55:55ID: 25746106

I've narrowed down the time frame to a few hours. but users only logon during that time using the terminal server. At the moment, I'm trying to match on the terminal server when somebody logged on, and match it to the file server when somebody logged on (the logon type was logon type 3 so it tells me they accessed the network share?) Does this sound correct? I'm looking for event id 528 and 540, on both serves and logon type 3 on the file server, with a time that matches somebody accessing the terminal server?

 

by: samenglishPosted on 2009-11-04 at 18:03:56ID: 25746145

you're on track... have fun.

 

by: JC_OMPosted on 2009-11-09 at 17:47:24ID: 25781791

I did not realise I graded it a B, my mistake, It deserves an A

 

by: JC_OMPosted on 2009-11-13 at 03:14:36ID: 31650322

Only way was with auditing. I was able to find out who accessed it at what time though using logon and logoff types on the terminal server and file server.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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