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When using third party image mounting tools to perform the forensic examination of NTFS filesystemsfile systems, it is extremely important to understand NTFS Junction Points so that you don't find yourself making a critical mistake during your analysis. An issue has been identified with third party image mounting software where NTFS junction points are hard linked to folders on the forensic investigator's own hard disk. If you use software to process a filesystem file system (such as NetAnalysis® or Anti-Virus software) and the filesystem file system is mounted with junction points, the Operating System on the forensic workstation may point the software to folders which are not contained within the suspect volume. This leads to the extremely serious situation, where the investigator may inadvertently process their own filesystemfile system.
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This is a feature of Microsoft Windows/NTFS and is not a bug with NetAnalysis. When recursively processing a folder structure, NetAnalysis will process the filesystem as it is presented by the mounting tool or Operating System. NTFS Junction Points were designed to be transparent to software applications.not an issue with NetAnalysis® as we can detect junction points and ignore them. |
This is possible with the following Operating Systems and filesystemsfile systems:
| Operating / File System |
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 Microsoft Windows Vista with NTFS volumes (and server Operating Systems) |
| Microsoft Windows 7 with NTFS volumes (and server Operating Systems) |
| Microsoft Windows 8 with NTFS volumes (and server Operating Systems) |
Symbolic Links
Windows 2000 and higher supports directory symbolic links, where a directory serves as a symbolic link to another directory on the computer. By using junction points, you can graft a target folder onto another NTFS folder or "mount" a volume onto an NTFS junction point. Junction points are transparent to software applications.
An NTFS symbolic link (symlink) is a filesystem file system object in the NTFS filesystem file system that points to another file system object. The object being pointed to is called the target. Symbolic links should be transparent to users; the links appear as normal files or directories, and can be acted upon by the user or application in exactly the same manner. Symbolic links are designed to aid in migration and application compatibility with POSIX operating systems, and were introduced with the modifications made to the NTFS file system with Windows Vista. Unlike an NTFS junction point (available since Windows 2000), a symbolic link can also point to a file or remote SMB network path. Additionally, the NTFS symbolic link implementation provides full support for cross-filesystem links. However, the functionality enabling cross-host symbolic links requires that the remote system also support them, which effectively limits their support to Windows Vista and later Windows operating systems.
Unlike an NTFS junction point, a symbolic link can also point to a file or remote SMB network path. While NTFS junction points support only absolute paths on local drives, the NTFS symbolic links allow linking using relative paths. Additionally, the NTFS symbolic link implementation provides full support for cross-filesystem links. However, the functionality enabling cross-host symbolic links requires that the remote system also support them, which effectively limits their support to Windows Vista and later Windows operating systems.
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- Doing so can cause the backup application to back up the same data more than once.
- It can also lead to cycles (circular references).
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Per-User Junctions and System Junctions
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