Using InstaQuery and advanced query to analyze artifact data

InstaQuery and advanced query are Aurora Focus features that allow you to analyze artifact data to discover indicators of compromise and to determine their prevalence on your organization’s devices. The results of a query will not tell you about how or when an artifact was used, but they will indicate whether an artifact has ever been observed in a forensically significant way that can signal a threat to your organization’s devices and data.

InstaQuery allows you to interrogate a set of devices about a specific type of forensic artifact, and allows you to determine whether an artifact exists on devices and how common that artifact is. Advanced query is an evolution of InstaQuery that provides more granular search capabilities using EQL syntax to enhance your ability to identify threats.

After you install and enable the Aurora Focus agent on a device, the agent collects artifacts and stores them in the Aurora Focus database. With Aurora Focus agent 2.x and earlier, the database is stored locally on the device. With Aurora Focus agent 3.0 and later, the agent automatically uploads and stores data in the Aurora Focus cloud database. When you create a query, forensically significant data is retrieved from the Aurora Focus database. You can view and explore the results in the management console.

For devices with Aurora Focus agent 2.x and earlier, a query can complete successfully only when a device is online. For devices with agent 3.0 and later, the device does not need to be online because the query will use the latest data available in the Aurora Focus cloud database.

A single query will display and retain a maximum of 10,000 results. The results of a query are retained for 60 days.

Note the following details about specific artifacts that you can query:

Artifact

Details

Files

You can query specific files that were created, modified, or deleted after the Aurora Focus agent was installed on the device. Aurora Focus focuses on files that can be used to execute content (for example, executable files, Microsoft Office documents, PDFs, and so on).

Network connections

You can perform queries against both IPv4 and IPv6 destination IP addresses. Aurora Focus discards private, non-routable, multicast, link-local, and loopback network traffic.

Processes
All processes are indexed in the Aurora Focus database, with the following restrictions:
  • Command lines are limited to 1 KiB of data
  • Process names are limited to 256 characters
  • Process image file paths are limited to 512 characters
  • Command lines that are altered after the process has started are not monitored

Registry keys

Aurora Focus monitors only persistence points and file deletion points. They are areas typically exploited by malware.

For a detailed list of registry keys and values monitored by Aurora Focus, see KB 42221237570843.

To learn more about how Aurora Focus monitors persistence points in the registry, see KB 42221282185883.