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Artifacts for Deleted File and file knowledge Part 1: ACMRU || Last Visited MRU || Vista/Win7-10 Thumbnails || Recycle Bin.

Updated: Mar 24


1.ACMRU


Description: On Windows XP machines, the search assistant feature allows users to search for various items such as filenames, computers, or words within files. This feature retains a user's search terms for future reference, constituting the "Search History" on the system.


Location:

The search history is stored in the Windows registry within the NTUSER.DAT hive:


NTUSER.DAT\Software\Microsoft\SearchAssistant\ACMru\####


Interpretation: The "ACMru" key contains different subkeys identified by numeric values ("####"), each representing a specific type of search history:


  • Search the internet: #### = 5001

  • Search for all or part of a document name: #### = 5603

  • Search for a word or phrase within a file: #### = 5604

  • Search for printers, computers, and people: #### = 5647

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2. Last Visited MRU


Already talked about this artifact in previous blog:


Reminder:

From command prompt: Manual extractionv(NTUSER.DAT)

Reg Save

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ComDlg32\LastVisitedPidlMRU  C:\Users\User\Downloads\output.hiv

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3.Vista/Win7-10 Thumbnails

The thumbs.db file, which was used in earlier versions of Windows, is not present in Vista/Win7-10. Instead, thumbnail data is stored under a single directory specific to each user, located in their application data directory under their home directory.


Location:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\


Manually extraction of files: So later can be

copy "C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\*" "C:\Users\User\Downloads\Shell"


Interpretation:

  • These files are generated when a user switches a folder to thumbnail mode or views pictures via a slideshow. Thumbnails in Vista/Win7-10 are stored in separate database files.

  • Vista/Win7-10 supports four thumbnail sizes:

  • 32 (small)

  • 96 (medium)

  • 256 (large)

  • 1024 (extra large)

  • The thumbcache database files store thumbnail copies of pictures based on their size, with each size having its own corresponding file in the cache folder.


Tool Used for analyses:

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4. Recycle Bin Artifact


Get deep details about this artifact from my previous blog.


Blog 1: Recycle Bin forensic

Blog 2 : Recycle Bin $I analyses Tool-->I_Parse_v1.1

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