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uuidguidsysinternals

What does MS Sysinternals tool(Sysmon)'s guid meaning


I have a guid which Sysinternals tools named Sysmon left. It looks like this.

3/18 C591B94E-4BDD-5AAE-0000-001073B13706

4/4 C591B94E-1BFA-5AC5-0000-0010E76F3903

4/29 C591B94E-A33F-5AE5-0000-001074CA4C26

5/2(different windows account) C591B94E-E23B-5AE9-0000-0010DD40EF32

5/2(on the virtual machine) A15730FB-E3DA-5AE9-0000-0010AB2C0800

It's generated when the process is created(Event id 1) in my computer on different days and different environment. And I Found the uuid format (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier)

xxxxxxxx-xxxx-Mxxx-Nxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx(M indicate the UUID version, and the one to three most significant bits of digit N indicate the UUID variant)

According to this, my 3/18 example is C591B94E-4BDD-5AAE-0000-001073B13706. It means M is 5, N is 0, In other words, UUID version is 5, variant is 0. It means It's SHA-1 Hash Value(Version 5) and Variant is 0.

I really wonder what the other number does mean. Because the sysmon's documents says that guid is helpful for correlation BUT they never explain what does this number mean.

I can guess the first group is related to PC information. because only when I chanaged the PC(5/2 on the virtual machine) the first group is changed(C591B94E -> A15730FB). So I thought It's related to Mac or IP address. But even if I changed the MAC and IP address, It stayed A15730FB or C591B94E.

I'm sure the second group is related to time.

But I can't figure out what does this exactly mean.


Solution

  • The GUID does not specifically mean anything in itself. Its purpose is to allow you to correlate and filter process events when Windows reuses process IDs (in this way you can think of it as a completely unique process ID).

    From: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/sysmon

    "Includes a process GUID in process create events to allow for correlation of events even when Windows reuses process IDs."