The project homepage is at https://wtrace.net.
Those are false-positives. As you know, wtrace source code is open, and all the officially released binaries are built using GitHub Actions (you may check the workflow in the release.yml file). If your antivirus thinks that wtrace is malware, calculate the binary checksum, and if it matches the one on the release page, please report it as false-positive. Thank you!
Wtrace [spelled: wɪtreɪs] is a command-line tool for recording trace events from the Operating System or a group of processes. Wtrace may collect, among others, File I/O and Registry operations, TPC/IP connections, and RPC calls. Its purpose is to give you some insights into what is happening in the system.
Additionally, it has various filtering capabilities and may also dump statistics at the end of the trace session. As it's just a standard command-line tool, you may pipe its output to another tool for further processing.
It works on Windows 8.1+ and requires .NET 4.7.2+. Wtrace is just one executable, wtrace.exe, and you may download it from the release page or install it with Chocolatey: choco install wtrace.
The available options are listed below. Please check the wtrace documentation page to learn details about them with some usage examples.
Usage: wtrace [OPTIONS] [pid|imagename args]
Options:
-f, --filter=FILTER Displays only events which satisfy a given FILTER.
(Does not impact the summary)
--handlers=HANDLERS Displays only events coming from the specified HANDLERS.
-c, --children Collects traces from the selected process and all its
children.
--newconsole Starts the process in a new console window.
-s, --system Collect only system statistics (Processes and DPC/ISR)
- shown in the summary.
--nosummary Prints only ETW events - no summary at the end.
-v, --verbose Shows wtrace diagnostics logs.
-h, --help Shows this message and exits.
The HANDLERS parameter is a list of handler names, separated with a comma.
Accepted handlers include:
process - only Process/Thread events (this handler is always enabled)
file - File I/O events
registry - Registry events (voluminous, disabled by default)
rpc - RPC events (enable image handler to allow RPC method name resolution)
tcp - TCP/IP events
udp - UDP events
image - image (module) events (load/unload)
Example: --handlers 'tcp,file,registry'
Each FILTER is built from a keyword, an operator, and a value. You may
define multiple events (filters with the same keywords are OR-ed).
Keywords include:
pid - filtering on the proces ID
pname - filtering on on the process name
name - filtering on the event name
level - filtering on the event level (1 [critical] - 5 [debug])
path - filtering on the event path
details - filtering on the event details
Operators include:
=, <> (does not equal), <= (ends with), >= (starts with), ~ (contains)
Example: -f 'pid = 1234', -f 'name ~ FileIO', -f 'level <= 4'
A sample trace session might look as follows:
PS temp> .\wtrace.exe notepad
wtrace v3.0.0 - collects process or system traces
Copyright (C) 2021 Sebastian Solnica (lowleveldesign.org)
Visit https://wtrace.net to learn more
HANDLERS
process, file, rpc, tcp
Preparing the realtime trace session. Please wait...
Tracing session started. Press Ctrl + C to stop it.
19:47:42.9656 notepad (13712.24820) FileIO/Create 'C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch\NOTEPAD.EXE-C5670914.pf' disposition: OPEN_EXISTING, options: 0x20 -> SUCCESS
19:47:42.9704 notepad (13712.24820) FileIO/FSControl 'C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch\NOTEPAD.EXE-C5670914.pf' class info: 0x900EB -> SUCCESS
19:47:42.9713 notepad (13712.24820) FileIO/QueryInfo 'C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch\NOTEPAD.EXE-C5670914.pf' class info: 0x5 -> SUCCESS
19:47:42.9715 notepad (13712.24820) FileIO/Read 'C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch\NOTEPAD.EXE-C5670914.pf' offset: 0, size: 12288 -> SUCCESS
19:47:42.9713 notepad (13712.24820) FileIO/Read 'C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch\NOTEPAD.EXE-C5670914.pf' offset: 0, size: 9947 -> SUCCESS
19:47:42.9794 notepad (13712.24820) FileIO/Create 'D:\temp\' disposition: OPEN_EXISTING, options: 0x21 -> SUCCESS
19:47:42.9808 notepad (13712.24820) FileIO/QueryInfo '<0xFFFFCD064B771CE0>' class info: 0x9 -> SUCCESS
19:47:42.9809 notepad (13712.24820) FileIO/QueryInfo '<0xFFFFCD064B771CE0>' class info: 0x9 -> SUCCESS
19:47:42.9810 notepad (13712.24820) FileIO/QueryInfo '<0xFFFFCD064B9FB700>' class info: 0x9 -> SUCCESS
19:47:42.9823 notepad (13712.27256) Thread/Start
19:47:42.9824 notepad (13712.26824) Thread/Start
19:47:42.9828 notepad (13712.25724) Thread/Start
19:47:42.9838 notepad (13712.24820) FileIO/Create 'C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\notepad.exe.Local\' disposition: OPEN_EXISTING, options: 0x200000 -> OBJECT_NAME_NOT_FOUND
19:47:42.9839 notepad (13712.24820) FileIO/Create 'C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\amd64_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.19041.746_none_ca02b4b61b8320a4' disposition: OPEN_EXISTING, options: 0x21 -> SUCCESS
19:47:42.9840 notepad (13712.25724) FileIO/Create 'C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\amd64_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.19041.746_none_ca02b4b61b8320a4\COMCTL32.dll' disposition: OPEN_EXISTING, options: 0x200000 -> SUCCESS
19:47:42.9840 notepad (13712.25724) FileIO/QueryInfo 'C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\amd64_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.19041.746_none_ca02b4b61b8320a4\COMCTL32.dll' class info: 0x4 -> SUCCESS
19:47:42.9840 notepad (13712.25724) FileIO/Cleanup 'C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\amd64_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.19041.746_none_ca02b4b61b8320a4\COMCTL32.dll' -> SUCCESS
19:47:42.9841 notepad (13712.25724) FileIO/Close 'C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\amd64_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.19041.746_none_ca02b4b61b8320a4\COMCTL32.dll' -> SUCCESS
19:47:42.9841 notepad (13712.25724) FileIO/Create 'C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\amd64_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.19041.746_none_ca02b4b61b8320a4\COMCTL32.dll' disposition: OPEN_EXISTING, options: 0x60 -> SUCCESS
19:47:42.9845 notepad (13712.25724) FileIO/Cleanup 'C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\amd64_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.19041.746_none_ca02b4b61b8320a4\COMCTL32.dll' -> SUCCESS
19:47:42.9845 notepad (13712.25724) FileIO/Close 'C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\amd64_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.19041.746_none_ca02b4b61b8320a4\COMCTL32.dll' -> SUCCESS
19:47:42.9860 notepad (13712.24820) FileIO/Create 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\IMM32.DLL' disposition: OPEN_EXISTING, options: 0x200000 -> SUCCESS
19:47:42.9860 notepad (13712.24820) FileIO/QueryInfo 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\IMM32.DLL' class info: 0x4 -> SUCCESS
19:47:42.9860 notepad (13712.24820) FileIO/Cleanup 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\IMM32.DLL' -> SUCCESS```
...
Process (13712) exited.
Closing the trace session. Please wait...
--------------------------------
Processes
--------------------------------
├─ notepad [13712]
--------------------------------
File I/O
--------------------------------
'C:\Windows\System32\config\SOFTWARE' Total: 32768B, Writes: 0B, Reads: 32768B
'C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch\NOTEPAD.EXE-C5670914.pf' Total: 19894B, Writes: 0B, Reads: 19894B
'C:\Windows\Fonts\staticcache.dat' Total: 60B, Writes: 0B, Reads: 60B
--------------------------------
RPC
--------------------------------
fb8a0729-2d04-4658-be93-27b4ad553fac (lsapolicylookup) [0] calls: 4
fb8a0729-2d04-4658-be93-27b4ad553fac (lsapolicylookup) [1] calls: 4
fb8a0729-2d04-4658-be93-27b4ad553fac (lsapolicylookup) [5] calls: 4
e60c73e6-88f9-11cf-9af1-0020af6e72f4 (epmapper) [0] calls: 2
fb8a0729-2d04-4658-be93-27b4ad553fac (lsapolicylookup) [2] calls: 2
e60c73e6-88f9-11cf-9af1-0020af6e72f4 (epmapper) [6] calls: 2
I would like to thank the authors of the TraceEvent and NtApiDotNet libraries. Wtrace would not exist without them.