Parsing Procmon files with Python

Procmon (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon) is a very powerful monitoring tool for Windows, capable of capturing file system, registry, process/thread and network activity.

Procmon uses internal file formats for configuration (PMC) and logs (PML). Prior to procmon-parser, PMC files could only be parsed and generated by the Procmon GUI, and PML files could be read only using the Procmon GUI, or by converting them to CSV or XML using Procmon command line.

The goals of procmon-parser are:

• Parsing & Building PMC files - making it possible to dynamically add/remove filter rules, which can significantly reduce the size of the log file over time as Procmon captures millions of events.
• Parsing PML files - making it possible to directly load the raw PML file into convenient python objects instead of having to convert the file to CSV/XML formats prior to loading.

PMC (Process Monitor Configuration) Parser

Usage

Loading configuration of a pre-exported Procmon configuration:

>>> from procmon_parser import load_configuration, dump_configuration, Rule
>>> with open("ProcmonConfiguration.pmc", "rb") as f:
...     config = load_configuration(f)
>>> config["DestructiveFilter"]
0
>>> config["FilterRules"]
[Rule(Column.PROCESS_NAME, RuleRelation.IS, "System", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.PROCESS_NAME, RuleRelation.IS, "Procmon64.exe", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.PROCESS_NAME, RuleRelation.IS, "Procmon.exe", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.PROCESS_NAME, RuleRelation.IS, "Procexp64.exe", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.PROCESS_NAME, RuleRelation.IS, "Procexp.exe", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.PROCESS_NAME, RuleRelation.IS, "Autoruns.exe", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.OPERATION, RuleRelation.BEGINS_WITH, "IRP_MJ_", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.OPERATION, RuleRelation.BEGINS_WITH, "FASTIO_", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.RESULT, RuleRelation.BEGINS_WITH, "FAST IO", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.PATH, RuleRelation.ENDS_WITH, "pagefile.sys", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.PATH, RuleRelation.ENDS_WITH, "$Volume", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.PATH, RuleRelation.ENDS_WITH, "$UpCase", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.PATH, RuleRelation.ENDS_WITH, "$Secure", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.PATH, RuleRelation.ENDS_WITH, "$Root", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.PATH, RuleRelation.ENDS_WITH, "$MftMirr", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.PATH, RuleRelation.ENDS_WITH, "$Mft", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.PATH, RuleRelation.ENDS_WITH, "$LogFile", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.PATH, RuleRelation.CONTAINS, "$Extend", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.PATH, RuleRelation.ENDS_WITH, "$Boot", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.PATH, RuleRelation.ENDS_WITH, "$Bitmap", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.PATH, RuleRelation.ENDS_WITH, "$BadClus", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.PATH, RuleRelation.ENDS_WITH, "$AttrDef", RuleAction.EXCLUDE), Rule(Column.EVENT_CLASS, RuleRelation.IS, "Profiling", RuleAction.EXCLUDE)]

Adding some new rules

>>> new_rules = [Rule('PID', 'is', '1336', 'include'), Rule('Process_Name', 'contains', 'python')]
>>> config["FilterRules"] = new_rules + config["FilterRules"]

Dropping filtered events

>>> config["DestructiveFilter"] = 1

Dumping the new configuration to a file

>>> with open("ProcmonConfiguration1337.pmc", "wb") as f:
...     dump_configuration(config, f)

File Format

For the raw binary format of PMC files you can refer to the docs, or take a look at the source code in configuration_format.py.

PML (Process Monitor Log) Parser

Usage

procmon-parser exports a ProcmonLogsReader class for reading logs directly from a PML file:

>>> from procmon_parser import ProcmonLogsReader
>>> f = open("LogFile.PML", "rb")
>>> pml_reader = ProcmonLogsReader(f)
>>> len(pml_reader)  # number of logs
53214

>>> first_event = next(pml_reader)  # reading the next event in the log
>>> print(first_event)
Process Name=dwm.exe, Pid=932, Operation=RegQueryValue, Path="HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM\ColorPrevalence", Time=7/12/2020 1:18:10.7752429 AM

>>> print(first_event.process)  #  Accessing the process of the event
"C:\Windows\system32\dwm.exe", 932
>>> for module in first_event.process.modules[:3]:
...     print(module)  # printing information about some modules
"C:\Windows\system32\dwm.exe", address=0x7ff6fa980000, size=0x18000
"C:\Windows\system32\d3d10warp.dll", address=0x7fff96700000, size=0x76c000
"C:\Windows\system32\wuceffects.dll", address=0x7fff9a920000, size=0x3f000

>>> first_event.stacktrace  # get a list of the stack frames addresses from the event
[18446735291098361031, 18446735291098336505, 18446735291095097155, 140736399934388, 140736346856333, 140736346854333, 140698742953668, 140736303659045, 140736303655429, 140736303639145, 140736303628747, 140736303625739, 140736303693867, 140736303347333, 140736303383760, 140736303385017, 140736398440420, 140736399723393]
>>>

File Format

For the raw binary format of PML files you can refer to the docs, or take a look at the source code in stream_logs_format.py.

Currently the parser is only tested with PML files saved by Procmon.exe of versions v3.4.0 or higher.

TODO

The PML format is very complex so there are some features (unchecked in the list) that are not supported yet:

• Getting the IRP name of the operation.
• Category column and Detail column, which contains different information about each operation type, is supported only for some of the operations:
  • Network operations
    • UDP/TCP Unknown
    • UDP/TCP Other
    • UDP/TCP Send
    • UDP/TCP Receive
    • UDP/TCP Accept
    • UDP/TCP Connect
    • UDP/TCP Disconnect
    • UDP/TCP Reconnect
    • UDP/TCP Retransmit
    • UDP/TCP TCPCopy
  • Process operations
    • Process Defined
    • Process Create
    • Process Exit
    • Thread Create
    • Thread Exit
    • Load Image
    • Thread Profile
    • Process Start
    • Process Statistics
    • System Statistics
  • Registry operations
    • RegOpenKey
    • RegCreateKey
    • RegCloseKey
    • RegQueryKey
    • RegSetValue
    • RegQueryValue
    • RegEnumValue
    • RegEnumKey
    • RegSetInfoKey
    • RegDeleteKey
    • RegDeleteValue
    • RegFlushKey
    • RegLoadKey
    • RegUnloadKey
    • RegRenameKey
    • RegQueryMultipleValueKey
    • RegSetKeySecurity
    • RegQueryKeySecurity
  • Filesystem Operations
    • VolumeDismount
    • VolumeMount
    • CreateFileMapping
    • CreateFile
    • CreatePipe
    • ReadFile
    • WriteFile
    • QueryInformationFile
    • SetInformationFile
    • QueryEAFile
    • SetEAFile
    • FlushBuffersFile
    • QueryVolumeInformation
    • SetVolumeInformation
    • DirectoryControl
    • FileSystemControl
    • DeviceIoControl
    • InternalDeviceIoControl
    • Shutdown
    • LockUnlockFile
    • CloseFile
    • CreateMailSlot
    • QuerySecurityFile
    • SetSecurityFile
    • Power
    • SystemControl
    • DeviceChange
    • QueryFileQuota
    • SetFileQuota
    • PlugAndPlay
    • QueryNameInformationFile
  • Profiling Operations
    • Thread Profiling
    • Process Profiling
    • Debug Output Profiling

These are a lot of operation types so I didn't manage to get to all of them yet :(
If there is an unsupported operation which you think its details are interesting, please let me know :)

Tests

To test that the parsing is done correctly, There are two fairly large Procmon PML files and their respective CSV format log files, taken from 64 bit and 32 bit machine. The test checks that each event in the PML parsed by procmon-parser equals to the respective event in the CSV.

Contributing

procmon-parser is developed on GitHub at eronnen/procmon-parser. Feel free to report an issue or send a pull request, use the issue tracker.