reglookup
Windows NT+ registry reader/lookup tool
root@kali:~# man reglookup
reglookup(1) reglookup(1)
NAME
reglookup - Windows NT+ registry reader/lookup tool
SYNOPSIS
reglookup [options] registry-file
DESCRIPTION
reglookup is designed to read windows registry elements and print them out
to stdout in a CSV-like format. It has filtering options to narrow the fo-
cus of the output. This tool is designed to work with on Windows NT-based
registries.
OPTIONS
reglookup accepts the following parameters:
-p prefix-filter
Specify a path prefix filter. Only keys/values under this registry
path will be output.
-t type-filter
Specify a type filter. Only elements which match this registry data
type will be printed. Acceptable values are: NONE, SZ, EXPAND_SZ,
BINARY, DWORD, DWORD_BE, LINK, MULTI_SZ, RSRC_LIST, RSRC_DESC,
RSRC_REQ_LIST, QWORD and KEY .
-h Enables the printing of a column header row. (default)
-i Printed values inherit the timestamp of their parent key, which is
printed along with them. Note that this timestamp is not necessar-
ily meaningful for any given value values because timestamps are
saved on keys only and you cannot tell which value has been modi-
fied since a change to any value of a given key would update the
time stamp.
-H Disables the printing of a column header row.
-s Adds five additional columns to output containing information from
key security descriptors and rarely used fields. The columns are:
owner, group, sacl, dacl, class. (This feature's output has not
been extensively tested.)
-S Disables the printing of security descriptor information. (default)
-v Verbose output.
registry-file
Required argument. Specifies the location of the registry file to
read. The system registry files should be found under: %System-
Root%/system32/config.
OUTPUT
reglookup generates comma-separated values (CSV) and writes them to std-
out. The format is designed to simplify parsing algorithms of other tools
by quoting CSV special characters using a common hexadecimal format.
Specifically, special characters or non-ascii bytes are converted to "%XX"
where XX is the hexadecimal value for the byte.
The number of columns or fields in each line is fixed for a given run of
the program, but may vary based on the command line options provided. See
the header line for information on which fields are available and what
they contain.
Some fields in some lines may contain sub-fields which require additional
delimiters. If these sub-delimiters occur in these sub-fields, they are
also encoded in the same way as commas or other special characters are.
Currently, the second, third, and fourth level delimiters are "|", ":",
and " ", respectively. These are particularly important to take note of
when security attributes are printed. Please note that these delimiters
may occur in fields that are not sub-delimited, and should not be inter-
preted as special.
Security attributes of registry keys have a complex structure which is
outlined here. Each key will generally have an associated ACL (Access Con-
trol List), which is made up of ACEs (Access Control Entries). Each ACE is
delimited by the secondary delimiter mentioned above, "|". The fields
within an ACE are delimited by the third-level delimiter, ":", and consist
of a SID, the ACE type (ALLOW, DENY, etc), a list of access rights, and a
list of flags. The last two fields are delimited by the fourth-level de-
limiter " ". These final lists are simply human-readable interpretations
of bits. The access rights abbreviations are listed below along with their
Microsoft-assigned names:
QRY_VAL KEY_QUERY_VALUE
SET_VAL KEY_SET_VALUE
CREATE_KEY KEY_CREATE_SUB_KEY
ENUM_KEYS KEY_ENUMERATE_SUB_KEYS
NOTIFY KEY_NOTIFY
CREATE_LNK KEY_CREATE_LINK
WOW64_64 KEY_WOW64_64KEY
WOW64_32 KEY_WOW64_32KEY
DELETE DELETE
R_CONT READ_CONTROL
W_DAC WRITE_DAC
W_OWNER WRITE_OWNER
SYNC SYNCHRONIZE
SYS_SEC ACCESS_SYSTEM_SECURITY
MAX_ALLWD MAXIMUM_ALLOWED
GEN_A GENERIC_ALL
GEN_X GENERIC_EXECUTE
GEN_W GENERIC_WRITE
GEN_R GENERIC_READ
And the meaning of each flag is:
OI Object Inherit
CI Container Inherit
NP Non-Propagate
IO Inherit Only
IA Inherited ACE
Please see the following references for more information:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/ms724878.aspx
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/aa374892.aspx
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa772242.aspx
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/220167
Note that some of the bits listed above have either not been allocated by
Microsoft, or simply aren't documented. If any bits are set in the above
two fields that aren't recognized, a hexadecimal representation of all of
these mystery bits will be included in the output. For instance, if the
lowest bit and third lowest bit were not recognized while being set, the
number "0x5" would be included as an element in the list.
While the ACL/ACE output format is mostly stable at this point, minor
changes may be introduced in future versions.
EXAMPLES
To read and print the contents of an entire system registry file:
reglookup /mnt/win/c/WINNT/system32/config/system
To limit the output to just those entries under the Services key:
reglookup -p /ControlSet002/Services /mnt/win/c/WINNT/system32/config/system
To limit the output to all registry values of type BINARY:
reglookup -t BINARY /mnt/win/c/WINNT/system32/config/system
And to limit the output to BINARY values under the Services key:
reglookup -t BINARY -p /ControlSet002/Services /mnt/win/c/WINNT/system32/config/system
BUGS
This program has been smoke-tested against most current Windows target
platforms, but a comprehensive test suite has not yet been developed.
(Please report results to the development mailing list if you encounter
any bugs. Sample registry files and/or patches are greatly appreciated.)
The SID conversions haven't been carefully checked for accuracy.
The MTIME conversions appear correctly produce the stored UTC timestamp.
However, due to the periodicity of registry writes, and the complexity of
the conversion, a small amount of error (on the order of seconds) may be
possible. The documentation available online from Microsoft on this field
is very poor.
For more information on registry format details, see: http://sen-
tinelchicken.com/research/registry_format/
CREDITS
This program was initially based on editreg.c by Richard Sharpe. It has
since been rewritten to use a modified version the regfio library written
by Gerald Carter. Heavy modifications to the library and the original com-
mand line interface have been done by Timothy D. Morgan.
Please see source code for a full list of copyrights.
LICENSE
Please see the file "LICENSE" included with this software distribution.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITH-
OUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License ver-
sion 3 for more details.
SEE ALSO
reglookup-timeline(1) reglookup-recover(1)
File Conversion Utilities 7 October 2025 reglookup(1)
reglookup-recover
Windows NT+ registry deleted data recovery tool
root@kali:~# man reglookup-recover
reglookup(1) reglookup(1)
NAME
reglookup-recover - Windows NT+ registry deleted data recovery tool
SYNOPSIS
reglookup-recover [options] registry-file
DESCRIPTION
reglookup-recover attempts to scour a Windows registry hive for deleted
data structures and outputs those found in a CSV-like format.
OPTIONS
reglookup-recover accepts the following parameters:
-v Verbose output.
-h Enables the printing of a column header row. (default)
-H Disables the printing of a column header row.
-l Display cells which could not be interpreted as valid registry
structures at the end of the output.
-L Do not display cells which could not be interpreted as valid reg-
istry structures. This is the default behavior.
-r Display raw cell contents for cells which were interpreted as in-
tact data structures. This additional output will appear on the
same line as the interpreted data.
-R Do not display raw cell contents for cells which were interpreted
as intact data structures. This is the default behavior.
registry-file
Required argument. Specifies the location of the registry file to
read. The system registry files should be found under: %System-
Root%/system32/config.
OUTPUT
reglookup-recover generates a comma-separated values (CSV) like output and
writes it to stdout. For more information on the syntax of the general
format, see reglookup(1).
This tool is new and the output format, particularly the included columns,
may change in future revisions. When this format stablizes, additional
documentation will be included here.
EXAMPLES
To dump the recoverable contents of a system registry hive:
reglookup-recover /mnt/win/c/WINDOWS/system32/config/system
Extract all available unallocated data, including unparsable unallocated
space and the raw data associated with parsed cells in a user-specific
registry:
reglookup-recover -r -l '/mnt/win/c/Documents and Settings/user/NTUSER.DAT'
BUGS
This program has been smoke-tested against most current Windows target
platforms, but a comprehensive test suite has not yet been developed.
(Please report results to the development mailing list if you encounter
any bugs. Sample registry files and/or patches are greatly appreciated.)
This program is new as of RegLookup release 0.9.0 and should be considered
unstable.
For more information on registry format details and the recovery algo-
rithm, see:
http://sentinelchicken.com/research/registry_format/ http://sen-
tinelchicken.com/research/registry_recovery/
CREDITS
This program was written by Timothy D. Morgan.
LICENSE
Please see the file "LICENSE" included with this software distribution.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITH-
OUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License ver-
sion 3 for more details.
SEE ALSO
reglookup-timeline(1) reglookup-recover(1)
File Conversion Utilities 7 October 2025 reglookup(1)
reglookup-timeline
Windows NT+ registry MTIME timeline generator
root@kali:~# reglookup-timeline -h
MTIME,FILE,PATH