How to audit and track file deletions

30 Jul
Posted on Author admin

How to audit and track file deletions

  • Enable Audit Policy: On the machine where you want to track file deletion, go to Administrative Tools->Local Security Policy->Audit Policy , double click “Audit Object Access” on the right pane and switch-on “Success” & “Failure”.
  • Enable auditing for user/group: You’ll need to enable and add user/security group for auditing on the folder which needs to be captured for file deletion.
    • Right click on the target folder (ex. C:\Program Files\Honeywell), select Properties and go toSecurity Tab.
    • Click on Advanced , and select Auditing Tab.
    • Add here the security group which would include the user who you think might be deleting the file. If you are not sure, include EVERYONE .
    • On the next screen select “Successful” & “Failed” on “Delete subfolders and files” & “Delete”. Apply new settings and exit from properties.
  • These configurations will generate file/folder access audit logs for the configured folder in Securit Event Logs . Since we are interested in only the logs that show details of file/folder deletions, we’ll need to look for Security Logs with event ID 560 .
  • Any file deletion operation will generate two events with event ID 560. After you’ve realized that your target file has been deleted, you’ll need to filter the security log view to show only logs with event ID 560 (right click on Event Viewer->Security, select Filter…).
  • If you quickly want to find out if your configured machine generated any file deletion event log, run the following command on your own (networked) machine. This will work only on XP and above, therefore, you can use this to query for security logs from Windows 2000 machines. Run cscript //h:cscript //s //nologo at least once on your system before executing the following command.

eventquery.vbs /S <Target_System_Name> /FI “ID eq 560” /L Security /V 
/FI : Filter 
/L : Log name {Application | Security | System} 
/V : Verbose output 

To know more about the above command, read here.

  • A typical security log with file deletion details will look something like this:

Event Type: Success Audit 
Event Source: Security 
Event Category: Object Access 
Event ID: 560 
User: GKY\Raj 
Computer: GKY 
Description: 
Object Open: 
Object Server: Security 
Object Type: File 
Object Name: D:\Test\testdoc.txt 
Handle ID: 1756 
Operation ID: {0,3190200} 
Process ID: 4040 
Image File Name: C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe 
Primary User Name: Raj 
Primary Domain: GKY 
Primary Logon ID: (0x0,0x40C41) 
Client User Name: – 
Client Domain: – 
Client Logon ID: – 
Accesses: DELETE 
SYNCHRONIZE 
ReadAttributes

NOTE:

  • Ensure that security log is set not to overwrite itself, and has sufficient size to hold logs spanning many days. You can configure these settings by right-clicking on Security subfolder inside Event Viewer.
  • You might want to test these settings by deleting few files yourself before assuming it’ll deliver what you expect!

Update:Just found a better alternative to built-in Event Viewer – http://www.eventlogxp.com/