foremost.8

.TH FOREMOST "8" "v1.5 - May 2009"

.SH NAME
foremost \- Recover files using their headers, footers, and data structures

.SH SYNOPSIS
.B foremost[\fB-h\fR][\fB-V\fR][\fB-d\fR][\fB-vqwQT\fR][\fB-b\fR<blocksize>][\fB-o\fR<dir>]
[\fB-t\fR<type>][\fB-s\fR<num>][\fB-i\fR<file>] 

.SH BUILTIN FORMATS
.PP
Recover files from a disk image based on file types specified by the
user using the -t switch.

.TP
.B jpg
Support for the JFIF and Exif formats including implementations used 
in modern digital cameras.


.TP
.B gif
.TP
.B png
.TP
.B bmp
Support for windows bmp format.
.TP
.B avi
.TP
.B exe 
Support for Windows PE binaries, will extract DLL and EXE files along
with their compile times.
.TP
.B mpg 
Support for most MPEG files (must begin with 0x000001BA) 
.TP
.B mp4
.TP
.B wav
.TP
.B riff 
This will extract AVI and RIFF since they use the same file 
format (RIFF). note faster than running each separately. 
.TP
.B wmv
Note may also extract -wma files as they have similar format.
.TP
.B mov
.TP
.B pdf
.TP
.B ole
This will grab any file using the OLE file structure.  This includes
PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Access, and StarWriter
.TP
.B doc
Note it is more efficient to run OLE as you get more bang for your buck.  
If you wish to ignore all other ole files then use this.
.TP
.B zip
Note is will extract .jar files as well because they use a similar format.
Open Office docs are just zip'd XML files so they are extracted as well.  
These include SXW, SXC, SXI, and SX? for undetermined OpenOffice files.
Office 2007 files are also XML based (PPTX,DOCX,XLSX)
.TP
.B rar
.TP
.B htm
.TP
.B cpp
C source code detection, note this is primitive and may 
generate documents other than C code.
.TP
.B all
Run all pre-defined extraction methods. [Default if no -t is specified]

.SH DESCRIPTION
.PP
Recover files from a disk image based on headers and footers specified by the
user.

.TP
\fB\-h\fR
Show a help screen and exit.

.TP

\fB\-V\fR
Show copyright information and exit.
.TP

\fB\-d\fR
Turn on indirect block detection, this works well for Unix file systems.
.TP
\fB\-T\fR
Time stamp the output directory so you don't have to delete the output
dir when running multiple times.

.TP
\fB\-v\fR
Enables verbose mode. This causes more information regarding the current
state of the program to be displayed on the screen, and is highly recommended.


.TP
\fB\-q\fR
Enables quick mode. In quick mode, only the start of each sector is 
searched for matching headers. That is, the header is searched only up to 
the length of the longest header. The rest of the sector, usually about 500 
bytes, is ignored. This mode makes foremost run considerably faster, but it 
may cause you to miss files that are embedded in other files. For example, 
using quick mode you will not be able to find JPEG images embedded in 
Microsoft Word documents. 

Quick mode should not be used when examining NTFS file systems. Because 
NTFS will store small files inside the Master File Table, these files will 
be missed during quick mode.
.br

.TP
\fB\-Q\fR
Enables Quiet mode. Most error messages will be suppressed.
.br

.TP
\fB\-w\fR
Enables write audit only mode.  No files will be extracted. 
.br

.TP
\fB\-a\fR
Enables write all headers, perform no error detection in terms of corrupted files.
.br

.TP
\fB\-b\fR \fInumber\fR
Allows you to specify the block size used in foremost.  This is relevant for 
file naming and quick searches.  The default is 512.
	ie.	foremost -b 1024 image.dd
.br
.TP
\fB\-k\fR \fInumber\fR
Allows you to specify the chunk size used in foremost.  This can improve 
speed if you have enough RAM to fit the image in.  It reduces the checking 
that occurs between chunks of the buffer.  For example if you had > 500MB of RAM.
	ie.	foremost -k 500 image.dd
.br

.TP
\fB\-i\fR \fIfile\fR
The \fIfile\fR is used as the input file.  If no input file is specified
or the input file cannot be read then stdin is used.

.TP
\fB-o\fR \fIdirectory\fR
Recovered files are written to the directory
\fIdirectory\fR. 

.TP
\fB-c\fR \fIfile\fR
Sets the configuration file to use. If none is specified, the file 
"foremost.conf" from the current directory is used, if that doesn't
exist then "/etc/foremost.conf" is used. The format for
the configuration file is described in the default configuration
file included with this program. See the \fICONFIGURATION FILE\fR
section below for more information.

.TP

\fB-s\fR \fInumber\fR
Skips \fInumber\fR blocks in the input file before beginning the search
for headers.    
	ie.  foremost -s 512 -t jpeg -i /dev/hda1
.TP


.PP

.SH CONFIGURATION FILE
The configuration file is used to control what types of files foremost
searches for. A sample configuration file, foremost.conf, is included with
this distribution. For each file type, the configuration file describes
the file's extension, whether the header and footer are case sensitive,
the maximum file size, and the header and footer for the file. The footer
field is optional, but header, size, case sensitivity, and extension are
not!

Any line that begins with a pound sign 
is considered a comment and ignored. Thus,
to skip a file type just put a pound sign at the beginning of that line

Headers and footers are decoded before use. To specify a value in
hexadecimal use \\x[0-f][0-f], and for octal use \\[0-7][0-7][0-7].  Spaces
can be represented by \\s. Example: "\\x4F\\123\\I\\sCCI" decodes to "OSI CCI".

To match any single character (aka a wildcard) use a ?. If you need to
search for the ? character, you will need to change the wildcard line
*and* every occurrence of the old wildcard character in the configuration
file. Do not forget those hex and octal values! ? is equal to \\x3f and
\\063.

There is a sample set of headers in the README file.

.SH EXAMPLES
.TP
.SH Search for jpeg format skipping the first 100 blocks
foremost -s 100 -t jpg -i image.dd 
.TP
.SH Only generate an audit file, and print to the screen (verbose mode)
foremost -av image.dd 
.TP
.SH Search all defined types
foremost -t all -i image.dd
.TP
.SH Search for gif and pdf's 
foremost -t gif,pdf -i image.dd
.TP
.SH Search for office documents and jpeg files in a Unix file system in verbose mode.  
foremost -vd -t ole,jpeg -i image.dd
.TP
.SH Run the default case
foremost image.dd
.PP

.SH AUTHORS
Original Code written by Special Agent Kris Kendall and Special Agent Jesse Kornblum of 
the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations.

Modification by Nick Mikus a Research Associate at the Naval Postgraduate 
School Center for Information Systems Security Studies and Research.  The modification
of Foremost was part of a masters thesis at NPS.

.SH BUGS
When compiling foremost on systems with versions of glibc 2.1.x or older,
you will get some (harmless) compiler warnings regarding the implicit 
declaration of fseeko and ftello. You can safely ignore these warnings.
.PP

.SH "REPORTING BUGS"
Because Foremost could be used to obtain evidence for criminal 
prosecutions, we
take all bug reports \fIvery\fR seriously. Any bug that jeopardizes the
forensic integrity of this program could have serious consequenses. When submitting a bug report, please include a description
of the problem, how you found it, and your contact information.
.PP
Send bug reports to:
.br
namikus AT users d0t sf d0t net
.PP
.SH COPYRIGHT
This program is a work of the US Government. In accordance with 17 USC 105,
copyright protection is not available for any work of the US Government.
.PP
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

.SH "SEE ALSO"
There is more information in the README file. 
.PP
Foremost was originally designed to imitate the functionality of CarvThis, 
a DOS program written by the Defense Computer Forensics Lab in in 1999.