By Dan Honkanen, GCIH, Security+, MCP, DCSE
This video is a companion to “Alternate Data Streams (ADS): Hiding In Plain Site” by myself and Brian Wilson. I am going to show you how Alternate Data Streams (ADS) work and show you a small example of how to make one. ADS is a feature in the NTFS file systems to make a compatibility with HFS, or the old Macintosh Hierarchical File System. ADS has been a function of NTFS since NT 4.0 and is still available in Windows XP (and yes even Windows Vista). ADS gives you the ability to inject/add file data into existing files without affecting their functionality, size, or display in utilities like Windows Explorer or even “dir” under command line.