You're reading from Windows Forensics Cookbook

Product typeBook

Published inAug 2017

Publisher

ISBN-139781784390495

Edition1st Edition

Tools

Windows OS

Concepts

Forensics

Authors (2):

Scar de Courcier

Oleg Skulkin

View More author details

Web Browser Forensics

In this chapter, we will cover the following recipes:

Mozilla Firefox analysis with BlackBag BlackLight
Google Chrome analysis with Magnet AXIOM
Microsoft Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge analysis with Belkasoft Evidence Center
Extracting web browser data from Pagefile.sys

Introduction

It is hard to imagine a case where web browser artifacts are useless. Child abuse material, intellectual property theft, cyber harassment, malware - browser artifacts will help to solve all sorts of cases. Nowadays, a huge number of web browsers are available. Some provide their users with increased privacy options, others do not. But even if the suspect uses a private browser, such as notorious Tor, a computer forensic examiner is able to extract some data, for example from swap and hibernation files (check the last recipe in this chapter) or a memory dump.

In this chapter, we will show you how to perform web browser forensics with some forensic tools you have already dealt with, such as Magnet AXIOM and Belkasoft Evidence Center, and some new ones, such as BlackBag's BlackLight.

Finally, you will learn how to defeat some anti-forensic techniques using swap...

Mozilla Firefox analysis with BlackBag's BlackLight

BlackBag's BlackLight is a very powerful digital forensic tool which we usually use for Mac OS X (macOS) forensicating. But, of course, Mac is not the only platform it supports. You can also use it for Android, iOS, and Windows forensics. What's more, you can use BlackLight both on Windows and macOS workstations, meaning that you can analyze Windows forensic images on a Mac! In this recipe, we will show you how to use BlackLight for Mozilla Firefox forensics.

Getting ready

If you are not a licensed user of BlackLight, you can request a trial licence on the BlackBag website. Use the REQUEST TRIAL button on the BlackLight page, fill in your personal information...

Google Chrome analysis with Magnet AXIOM

Google Chrome is another very popular web browser. You will find its artifacts during many forensic examinations, not only on Windows systems, but also macOS, Linux, and even mobile platforms. With the help of this recipe you will learn how to parse Google Chrome artifacts with Magnet AXIOM.

Getting ready

Of course, you can use the whole forensic image as the source, but it is much faster to extract the Google Chrome folder from the user's profile, as this greatly reduces the dataset that has to be parsed. Here is where you can find the folders you need:

Windows XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome

Windows Vista and above:

C:\Users...

Microsoft Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge analysis with Belkasoft Evidence Center

Hopefully, you have already added Belkasoft Evidence Center to your Windows forensic toolkit. As you will remember, it can help you to carve data out of memory dumps. Of course, this is not the only task it can help you to solve. It has robust support for hundreds of Windows operating system forensic artifacts, including different web browsers. In this recipe, we will show you how to use it for Microsoft Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge forensic analysis.

Getting ready

If you already have Belkasoft Evidence Center installed, just start the tool. Otherwise, use the trial download link from the See also section to obtain a trial version...

Extracting web browser data from Pagefile.sys

You already know that you can extract quite a lot of useful forensic artifacts from a memory dump. But there is more: you can perform memory forensics even without a memory dump! There are files on the drive that contain some parts of memory. These files are pagefile.sys, swapfile.sys, and hiberfil.sys, and they are located at the system root (C:\). In this recipe, we will show you how to extract browser data from pagefile.sys with Belkasoft Evidence Center.

Getting ready

First of all, make sure you have Belkasoft Evidence Center with a valid licence (or a trial version) installed on your workstation. Then, use a tool of your choice, for example FTK Imager, to export data from...

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Authors (2)

Scar de Courcier

Scar de Courcier is Senior Editor at digital forensics website Forensic Focus. She also works as an independent consultant on online and offline child protection projects. In her spare time, she enjoys swimming, pretending she lives on the USS Voyager, and hanging out with her cat.
Read more about Scar de Courcier

Oleg Skulkin

Oleg Skulkin is the Head of Digital Forensics and Malware Analysis Laboratory at Group-IB. Oleg has worked in the fields of digital forensics, incident response, and cyber threat intelligence and research for over a decade, fueling his passion for uncovering new techniques used by hidden adversaries. Oleg has authored and co-authored multiple blog posts, papers, and books on related topics and holds GCFA and GCTI certifications.
Read more about Oleg Skulkin

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