I've nearly finished Webscavator, my visualisation application for the forensic analysis of user web history! The next series of blog posts will describe some of the visualisations I've used and how to code them. They are all written in server-side Python and client-side Javascript using jQuery. First on the list are heatmaps. These visualisations show the data … Continue reading Visualising data: Heatmaps
Category: forensics
How Internet Explorer stores web history
Internet Explorer stores files downloaded from the internet in a cache called Temporary Internet Files (e.g. html pages, images, CSS files). Each cached file is assigned an alphanumeric cache name. Some index.dat files serve to map the cached name with the filename and URL it came from. Other index.dat files store the user’s cookies or web browser history (by default 20 … Continue reading How Internet Explorer stores web history
How Opera stores web history
Out of all the popular browsers, Opera leaves behind the least amount of useful information for investigators. Not only is the data stored in plain text format, but it does not record every URL visited, only the latest one. Therefore it is impossible to tell how often someone has visited a particular website. Even when … Continue reading How Opera stores web history
How Safari stores web history
Safari has a very simple method of storing browser history compared to those that use SQLite databases. If the computer is running Windows XP, the Safari default path to user data is: C:\Documents and Settings\<User Name>\Application Data\Apple Computer\Safari For Windows Vista and Windows 7, the default path is: C:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\Safari\ For Apple Macintosh computers, … Continue reading How Safari stores web history
How Google Chrome stores web history
In 2008 Google released most of Chrome’s source code as a project called Chromium under a BSD license. Chromium is essentially the same browser as Chrome, but lacks built-in automatic updates and Google branding [Chromium Developer Website]. Assuming the computer is running Windows XP, the Chrome default path to user data is: C:\Documents and Settings\<User … Continue reading How Google Chrome stores web history
How Firefox stores web history
Firefox version 3 (first released in 2008) employs a different system of storing browser history than its predecessor Firefox 2. Since only 2.75% of Firefox users still use version 2 or smaller, only Firefox version 3 will be explored here and will hence just been known as Firefox. Firefox uses SQLite database files to store browser history, … Continue reading How Firefox stores web history
Webscavator
So I started my thesis 'officially' yesterday, after being told we all were allowed to proceed to masters following the exam board meeting. No actual results posted up yet, but hopefully I did well! Unofficially, I've been working on my thesis for about 2 weeks, just making the skeleton application. I'm making a program called … Continue reading Webscavator
The Criminology of Computer Crime
For one of my courses I have to write an essay on a topic related to computer forensics that hasn't been taught in class. I have chosen to write mine on criminology of computer crime, and it's so interesting! If you want a really good overview of criminology then read the following two PDFs - Criminological … Continue reading The Criminology of Computer Crime
The Future of Encryption?
2 weeks ago I was writing an essay on the Open Computer Forensics Architecture (OCFA). I gave up trying to get OCFA to work in the end as it was just a total pain. The documentation is awful, and the error messages it spews out are not useful. Steven spent a few hours looking at their … Continue reading The Future of Encryption?
Masters Project
I asked one of my lecturers about doing text visualisation as my masters thesis and he said it sounded great, even emailed me a paper to read! I don't have an exact question yet, but it'll be something along the lines of visualising web browser history. I'm quite excited about it weeee! I'll have to … Continue reading Masters Project
Lowmanio 