Removable devices connected to a machine

You might need to identify removable devices that were connected to computer or other network device when doing the following:

• Investigating a ransomware attack

Prerequisites 

In order to execute this procedure in your environment, you may need to first on-board the data, services, or apps shown in the following table.

Example

The purpose of this example is to show how this procedure works in a general environment. In your environment, you can optimize the search by specifying an index, a time range, or a different data source. 

A Windows desktop has been infected by ransomware that you believe might have been transmitted through a USB drive. You want to identify the drive. 

1. Run the following search:

sourcetype=winregistry friendlyname

2. Expand a result and look at the registry_value_data field.  

Search Explanation

Here is an explanation of what each part of this search achieves. You can adjust this query based on the specifics of your environment.

Result

The value in the registry_value_data field is the name of the USB device. After you have identified the device, you might want to look at the host or src_ip fields in the search result to identify the machine the device was plugged into. You might also want to identify any files that were downloaded from the removable device.