watch_etw

VQL Reference

Event Plugins

watch_etw

Plugin

Arg	Description	Type
name	A session name	string
guid	A Provider GUID to watch	string (required)
any	Any Keywords	uint64
all	All Keywords	uint64
level	Log level (0-5)	int64
stop	If provided we stop watching automatically when this lambda returns true	Lambda
timeout	If provided we stop after this much time	uint64
capture_state	If true, capture the state of the provider when the event is triggered	bool
enable_map_info	Resolving MapInfo with TdhGetEventMapInformation is very expensive and causes events to be dropped so we disabled it by default. Enable with this flag.	bool
description	Description for this GUID provider	string
kernel_tracer_type	A list of event types to fetch from the kernel tracer (can be registry, process, image_load, network, driver, file, thread, handle)	list of string
kernel_tracer_stacks	A list of kernel tracer event types to append stack traces to (can be any of the types accepted by kernel_tracer_type)	list of string

Description

Watch for events from an ETW provider.

Event Tracing for Windows is a powerful built in monitoring and eventing system in Windows. This plugin provides an interface to this capability.

To learn more about ETW see https://docs.velociraptor.app/blog/2021/2021-08-18-velociraptor-and-etw/ or https://docs.velociraptor.app/blog/2021/2021-09-03-process-spoofing/

The NT Kernel Logger

This plugin also provides specialized support for more advanced loggers. For example the NT Kernel Logger is a special ETW provider that can report a lot of telemetry.

The NT Kernel Logger is a special ETW session which can monitor the following event types:

registry - all registry interactions like keys/values
process - all processes start/stop
image_load - dll loading and mapping
network - inbound/outbound connections
driver - drivers loaded
file - file io like opening files/deleting files etc
handles - Any time a kernel handle is created

Additionally this provider can report a full stack trace for each event.

You can specify this provider by the GUID {9E814AAD-3204-11D2-9A82-006008A86939} or as a shorthand kernel. This will enabled a special ETW session with support for this special provider.

When this provider is used, you can also specify what kind of events you want to see using the kernel_tracer_type parameter. This is a list of any of the following keywords registry, process, image_load, network, driver, file, handles.

Additionally, you can specify which kinds of events will be decorated with stack traces using the kernel_tracer_stacks parameter.

Example:

SELECT * FROM
watch_etw(guid='kernel',
   kernel_tracer_type=['image_load', 'registry', 'file', 'process', 'network'],
   kernel_tracer_stacks=['registry', 'network', 'file', 'process'])

An example of a file created by Chrome - This example illustrates the backtrace reported by the Kernel and decorated by Velociraptor with the function names (when known).

{
  "System": {
    "ID": 0,
    "ProcessID": 7672,
    "TimeStamp": "2025-01-02T06:21:36.7026893Z",
    "Provider": "{90CBDC39-4A3E-11D1-84F4-0000F80464E3}",
    "OpCode": 64,
    "KernelEventType": "CreateFile"
  },
  "EventData": {
    "IrpPtr": "0xFFFF830E25838598",
    "FileObject": "0xFFFF830E34395DD0",
    "TTID": "1124",
    "CreateOptions": "33554528",
    "FileAttributes": "0",
    "ShareAccess": "7",
    "OpenPath": "C:\\Users\\Administrator\\AppData\\Local\\Google\\Chrome\\User Data\\Default\\Code Cache\\js\\5926f528a1f0ddd3_0"
  },
  "Backtrace": [
    "fileinfo.sys!0x11107",
    "ntoskrnl.exe!IofCallDriver",
    "ntoskrnl.exe!SePrivilegeCheck",
    "ntoskrnl.exe!_setjmpex",
    "ntdll.dll!NtCreateFile",
    "KernelBase.dll!CreateFileW",
    "chrome.dll!0x55bc08",
    "chrome.dll!0x834d17",
    "chrome.dll!IsSandboxedProcess",
    "chrome.dll!IsSandboxedProcess",
    "chrome.dll!0xae178",
    "chrome.dll!0x966030",
    "kernel32.dll!BaseThreadInitThunk",
    "ntdll.dll!RtlUserThreadStart"
  ]
},

The following is an example of an outbound connection over port 22.

 {
   "System": {
     "ID": 0,
     "ProcessID": 4294967295,
     "TimeStamp": "2025-01-02T06:27:38.6957971Z",
     "Provider": "{9A280AC0-C8E0-11D1-84E2-00C04FB998A2}",
     "OpCode": 12,
     "KernelEventType": "ConnectTCPv4"
   },
   "EventData": {
     "PID": "1748",
     "size": "0",
     "daddr": "192.168.0.2",
     "saddr": "192.168.1.237",
     "dport": "22",
     "sport": "50068",
     "mss": "1460",
     "sackopt": "1",
     "tsopt": "0",
     "wsopt": "1",
     "rcvwin": "2098020",
     "rcvwinscale": "8",
     "sndwinscale": "7",
     "seqnum": "0",
     "connid": null
   },
}