Zal.:.

Zal Walt

Recovering data from a backup should be an easy thing to do. At least this is what you expect. Yesterday I had a problem which should have been easy to solve, but it was not. I hope this blog post can help others who face the same problem.

The problem

1. I had an encrypted Time Machine backup which was not used for months
2. This backup was not on an official Apple Time Capsule or on a USB HDD, but on a WD MyCloud NAS
3. I needed files from this backup
4. After running out of time I only had SSH access to the macOS, no GUI

The struggle

By default, Time Machine is one of the best and easiest backup solution I have seen. As long as you stick to the default use case, where you have one active backup disk, life is pink and happy. But this was not my case.

As always, I started to Google what shall I do. One of the first options recommended that I add the backup disk to Time Machine, and it will automagically show the backup snapshots from the old backup. Instead of this, it did not show the old snapshots but started to create a new backup. Panic button has been pressed, backup canceled, back to Google.

Other tutorials recommend to click on the Time Machine icon and pressing alt (Option) key, where I can choose "Browse other backup disks". But this did not list the old Time Machine backup. It did list the backup when selecting disks in Time Machine preferences, but I already tried and failed that way.

YAT (yet another tutorial) recommended to SSH into the NAS, and browse the backup disk, as it is just a simple directory where I can see all the files. But all the files inside where just a bunch of nonsense, no real directory structure.

YAT (yet another tutorial) recommended that I can just easily browse the content of the backup from the Finder by double-clicking on the sparse bundle file. After clicking on it, I can see the disk image on the left part of the Finder, attached as a new disk.
Well, this is true, but because of some bug, when you connect to the Time Capsule, you don't see the sparse bundle file. And I got inconsistent results, for the WD NAS, double-clicking on the sparse bundle did nothing. For the Time Capsule, it did work.
At this point, I had to leave the location where the backup was present, and I only had remote SSH access. You know, if you can't solve a problem, let's complicate things by restrict yourself in solutions.

Finally, I tried to check out some data forensics blogs, and besides some expensive tools, I could find the solution.

The solution

Finally, a blog post provided the real solution - hdiutil.
The best part of hdiutil is that you can provide the read-only flag to it. This can be very awesome when it comes to forensics acquisition.

To mount any NAS via SMB:

mount_smbfs afp://<username>@<NAS_IP>/<Share_for_backup> /<mountpoint>

To mount a Time Capsule share via AFP:

mount_afp afp://any_username:password@<Time_Capsule_IP>/<Share_for_backup> /<mountpoint>

And finally this command should do the job:

hdiutil attach test.sparsebundle -readonly

It is nice that you can provide read-only parameter.

If the backup was encrypted and you don't want to provide the password in a password prompt, use the following:

printf '%s' 'CorrectHorseBatteryStaple' | hdiutil attach test.sparsebundle -stdinpass -readonly

Note: if you receive the error "resource temporarily unavailable", probably another machine is backing up to the device

And now, you can find your backup disk under /Volumes. Happy restoring!

Probably it would have been quicker to either enable the remote GUI, or to physically travel to the system and login locally, but that would spoil the fun.

Related news

Zal Walt

There are a lot of hacking tools available over the internet but mostly we need some of them. In this blog you'll learn about hacking tools which are typically used in the world of hacking by penetration testers.

SmartWhois

SmartWhois is an information-gathering program that allows you to find all available information about an IP address, hostname, or domain, including country, state or province, city, name of the network provider, administrator, and technical support contact information. SmartWhois is a graphical version of the basic Whois program.

SocksChain

SocksChain is a tool that gives a hacker the ability to attack through a chain of proxy servers. The main purpose of doing this is to hide the hacker's real IP address and therefore minimize the chance of detection. When a hacker works through several proxy servers in series, it's much harder to locate the hacker. Tracking the attacker's IP address through the logs of several proxy servers is complex and tedious work. If one of the proxy servers' log files is lost or incomplete, the chain is broken, and the hacker's IP address remains anonymous.

NeoTrace, VisualRoute, and VisualLookout

NeoTrace, VisualRoute, and VisualLookout are all packet-tracking tools with a GUI or visual interface. They plot the path the packets travel on a map and can visually identify the locations of routers and other internet working devices. These tools operate similarly to traceroute and perform the same information gathering; however, they provide a visual representation of the results.

Visualware's eMailTrackerPro

Visualware's eMailTrackerPro ( www.emailtrackerpro.com/ ) and MailTracking ( http://mailtracking.com/ ) are tools that allow an ethical hacker to track email messages. When you use these tools to send an email, forward an email, reply to an email, or modify an email, the resulting actions and tracks of the original email are logged. The sender is notified of all actions performed on the tracked email by an automatically generated email.

IPEye

IPEye is a TCP port scanner that can do SYN, FIN, Null, and XMAS scans. It's a command line tool.
IPEye probes the ports on a target system and responds with closed, reject, drop, or open. Closed means there is a computer on the other end, but it doesn't listen at the port. Reject means a firewall is rejecting the connection to the port (sending a reset back). Drop means a firewall is dropping everything to the port, or there is no computer on the other end. Open means some kind of service is listening at the port. These responses help a hacker identify what type of system is responding.

IPSecScan

IPSecScan is a tool that can scan either a single IP address or a range of addresses looking for systems that are IPSec enabled that means the system has IPSec enabled while disabled means that it either has IPSec disabled, the compatibility issue or the configuration issue that not reveal to you that it has IPSec enabled. Indeterminable means that the scanner isn't sure if IPSec is enabled or disabled.

Icmpenum

Icmpenum uses not only ICMP Echo packets to probe networks, but also ICMP Timestamp and ICMP Information packets. Furthermore, it supports spoofing and sniffing for reply packets. Icmpenum is great for scanning networks when the firewall blocks ICMP Echo packets but fails to block Timestamp or Information packets.

SNMP Scanner

SNMP Scanner allows you to scan a range or list of hosts performing ping, DNS, and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) queries. This tool helps you to find out the current information about the device of SNMP nodes in the given network.

hping2 tool

The hping2 tool is notable because it contains a host of other features besides OS fingerprinting such as TCP, User Datagram Protocol (UDP), ICMP, and raw-IP ping protocols, traceroute mode, and the ability to send files between the source and target system.

THC-Scan, PhoneSweep, and TeleSweep

THC-Scan, PhoneSweep, and TeleSweep are tools that identify phone numbers and can dial a target to make a connection with a computer modem. These tools generally work by using a predetermined list of common usernames and passwords in an attempt to gain access to the system. Most remote-access dial-in connections aren't secured with a password or use very rudimentary security.