• About
• What is Alternate Data Stream (ADS) ?
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• Download   New v4.1

It's advanced auto analysis coupled with Online Threat Verification mechanism makes it the best tool available in the market for eradicating the evil streams.

It comes with fast multi threaded ADS scanner which can recursively scan over entire system and quickly uncover all hidden streams. All such discovered streams are represented using specific color patten based on threat level which makes it easy for human eye to distinguish between suspicious and normal streams.

Stream Armor is fully Portable software and does not require JAVA, .NET or any other components. It works on wide range of platforms starting from Windows XP to Windows 10.

Alternate Data Stream (ADS) is the lesser known feature of Windows NTFS file system which provides the ability to put data into existing files and folders without affecting their functionality and size. Any such stream associated with file/folder is not visible when viewed through conventional utilities such as Windows Explorer or DIR command or any other file browser tools.

It is used legitimately by Windows and other applications to store additional information (for example summary information) for the file. Even 'Internet Explorer' adds the stream named 'Zone.Identifier' to every file downloaded from the internet.

Due to this hidden nature of ADS, hackers have been exploiting this method to secretly store their Rootkit components on the compromised system without being detected. For example, the infamous Rootkit named 'Mailbot.AZ' aka 'Backdoor.Rustock.A' used to hide its driver file into system32 folder (C:\Windows\system32) as a stream '18467'.

In short, ADS provides easy way to store the malicious content covertly as well as execute it directly without making even a bit of noise. Only sophisticated tools such as StreamArmor has the ability to discover and destroy these hidden malicious streams.

For complete details on 'Alternate Data Streams' please refer to the following article, 'Exploring Alternate Data Streams'

• Fast, multi threaded ADS scanner to quickly and recursively scan entire computer or drive or just a folder.
• 'Snapshot View' for quick identification of selected stream and faster manual analysis.
• Option to 'Ignore Known and Zero Streams' which automatically ignores all known streams (such as Zone.Identifier) and streams with zero size, thus greatly reducing time and effort involved in manual analysis.
• Advanced stream file type detection which analyzes internal content of file to detect the real file type rather than just going by the file extension. Here is the list of some of the major file type categories detected by StreamArmor     
  • Executable File Type (EXE, DLL, SYS, COM, MSI, CLASS)
  • Archive File Type (ZIP, RAR, TAR, GZ, COM)
  • Audio File Type (MP3, WAV, RA, RM, WMA, M3U)
  • Video File Type (WMV, AVI, MPEG, MP4, SWF, DIVX, FLV, DAT, VOB, MOV)
  • Database Type (MS ACCESS)
  • Document Type (PDF, XML, DOC, RTF, All MS Office old & new formats)
• Sophisticated 'Auto Threat Analysis' based on heuristic technology for identifying anomaly in the discovered streams based on the characteristics and patterns.
• 'Online Threat Verification' to check for presence of Virus or Rootkit in the suspicious stream using any of the following prominent online websites
  • VirusTotal (www.VirusTotal.com)
  • ThreatExpert (www.ThreatExpert.com)
  • MalwareHash (www.MalwareHash.com)
• Representation of streams using color pattern based on threat level makes it easy and fast for human eye to distinguish between suspicious streams from normal ones.
• Parallel analysis of discovered streams during the scanning process, allows user to start with analysis immediately without waiting for entire scanning operation to be completed.
• View the entire content of selected stream using the configured third party application. In fact user can configure different applications for normal & executable stream file.
• Save the selected stream file content to a disk, or USB drive or DVD for further analysis.
• Delete the selected alternate data stream (ADS) from its base file or folder.
• Execute/Run the selected executable stream file for analyzing its malicious nature in virtual environments such as VMWare.
• Dynamic performance tuning mechanism by adjusting the ADS scan thread count [only for advanced users].
• Sort feature to arrange the scanned streams based on its name/threat level/content type/size.
• Export the entire list of discovered streams to a disk file in HTML format for offline analysis.