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Book Overview & Buying
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Table Of Contents
Digital Forensics Cookbook
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Property lists are great for small configuration items. When larger, relational storage is needed, macOS (and many installed applications) use SQLite databases. SQLite is a lightweight, open-source relational engine that can quickly and efficiently access and write data. SQLite files found in macOS commonly use extensions like .sqlite, .db, .sqlitedb, .storedata, .abcddb, or no extension at all.
These databases are normally accompanied by -shm (shared-memory) and -wal (write-ahead log) files; the WAL is especially important because it often contains recent, uncommitted user data that can be recovered. Common macOS artifacts kept in SQLite databases include Safari history, iMessage data, and Photos metadata. Because SQLite is also heavily used on mobile platforms, learning to parse it pays off across both desktop and mobile forensics.
The following are common per-user locations for databases associated with default macOS applications:
~/Pictures/Photos...