Presentations & Interviews "Cache Up" with Ryan Benson I sat down with Jessica Hyde (from Magnet Forensics) on her "Cache Up" podcast and talked about my DFIR career, open source projects, and share thoughts on how folks can get started in DFIR. Check it out!
Chrome New "Media History" File Added to Chrome There's a new database added in Chrome 86, dedicated to tracking media playback. Here's a first look at its contents!
Presentations & Interviews Unfurl on "Life Has No Ctrl+Alt+Delete" A few weeks ago I was on "Life Has No Ctrl+Alt+Del" with @HeatherMahalik of Cellebrite giving an overview of Unfurl, how to use it, and walking through (many) examples. The video recording is now up!
Presentations & Interviews Video of "Extract & Visualize Data from URLs using Unfurl" Posted My talk "Extract and Visualize Data from URLs using Unfurl" at the SANS DFIR Summit 2020 has been posted on YouTube! I had a great time presenting at the first ever virtual DFIR
Digital Forensics Tinkering with TikTok Timestamps I tinker with TikTok - and find a timestamp embedded in video URLs!
Unfurl New Unfurl Version Released A new version of Unfurl is here! v20200729 adds: improved Google Search URL parsing (RLZ and EI parameters), more short-link expansions, DuckDuckGo search parsing, mailto link parsing, and a better Docker setup.
Python Another Google Search Parameter? For RLZ! There are many query string parameters in Google Search URLs that hold interesting information. The rlz parameter is no exception, but thankfully it isn't as mysterious as many others; Google explains what the
Unfurl Unfurl CLI version (and now on PyPI) A new Unfurl version brings a CLI tool & easier installs via PyPI.
Hindsight Hindsight is 2020 Hindsight is 2020! ... ok, it's actually 20200607, but I've been waiting years to make a bad "Hindsight 2020" joke. There's a new version of Hindsight!
Digital Forensics Unfurling Unknown Protobufs With this latest update, Unfurl can now parse protobufs as well! If you hover over a field, Unfurl tries to explain a bit about wire types and possible other data formats.
Tools Unfurl... in 3D Unfurl has been a fun tool, but I've heard you: it's boring. This update to Unfurl will change all that!
Web Browsers Google "ved" Parameter Versions The "ved" parameter in Google URLs contains valuable link context. I've found a new version ("v2") with more info!
Presentations & Interviews Talking about Unfurl on the Forensic Lunch Ryan Benson on Dave Cowen's Forensic Lunch talking about Unfurl (and other DFIR things).
Tools Introducing Unfurl Unfurl takes a URL and expands ("unfurls") it into a directed graph, extracting every bit of information from the URL and exposing the obscured. It does this by breaking up a URL up
Web Browsers Deciphering Browser Hieroglyphics: FileSystem (Part 3) Part 3 in the Deciphering Browser Hieroglyphics series examines LevelDB databases and Chrome's FileSystem.
Web Browsers Deciphering Browser Hieroglyphics: LocalStorage (Part 2) The second post in "Deciphering Browser Hieroglyphics" discusses LocalStorage and using CyberChef to decode it.
Open Source Tools Hindsight v2.4 Adds JSONL Output Hindsight v2.4.0 add JSONL output, support for the newest versions of Chrome (1-76), and other small fixes.
Web Browsers Deciphering Browser Hieroglyphics: Intro (Part 1) In this first post in "Deciphering Browser Hieroglyphics" I introduce Chromotopia and our artifact deciphering approach.
Open Source Tools Solving Magnet Forensics CTF with Plaso, Timesketch, and Colab The folks at Magnet Forensics had a digital forensics-themed Capture the Flag competition and I wanted to take a crack at it using the open source tools we use/build here at Google: Plaso, Timesketch, and Colab/Python.
Web Browsers A First Look at Chromium-Based Edge A quick (forensic) look at the new Chromium-based Edge web browser. TL;DR: it looks a lot like Chrome.
Open Source Tools Hindsight v2.3 Finds and Parses Multiple Chrome Profiles Hindsight v2.3.0 adds input path searching, parsing of LocalStorage LevelDB files, support for newer versions of Chrome (1-73), and minor fixes.
Web Browsers Chrome Values Lookup Tables I've fielded a few questions recently about what some value buried in a Chrome artifact means. I find myself going to the Hindsight source on GitHub and drilling down into the code because
Chrome Capturing Chrome's Evolution When I was pretty fresh in the field of digital forensics, I picked this new thing called Google Chrome to dig into. There weren't a lot of tools out there that could parse
Tools Chrome Evolution Chrome has evolved in many aspects since its release: the browser's appearance, capabilities, and how it stores data have all changed greatly since 2008. This page lets you explore how the files and
Digital Forensics New Year, New dfir.blog 2019 is here and the new year brings something with it I've wanted to do for a while: re-launch my blog! It has a new look and a new home at dfir.blog.
