Browser Forensics - Not Simple

1.      Just read one book by Peter C.Hewitt on Browser Forensics.An eye opener for anyone....the amount of info that stands compromised whilst using any browser is astonishing.....

2.      Now in a normal routine maintenance when I used to clear my browser History,cookies and cache....when I used to remove unnecessary files using utilities like Glary Utilities,Cc Cleaner and Tuneup utilities....i used to think that there r no traces left...before I was introduced to Mandiant's Webhistory, Pasco, Galleta and IE Passview.

3.      I checked up first with Mandiant's Webhistory....an 8 MB file...simple to install,,,free.Web Historian is a program that allows an investigator to collect, display and analyze web history data using Mandiant Intelligent Response (MIR) technology. It seeks to provide a customizable yet simplistic interface to view and navigate voluminous amounts of web history data. Perhaps the most powerful feature is the ability to correlate and provide multiple views of the data (including graphical and timeline) through the Analyzer and Web Profiler tool, in the hopes that investigators can come to well-informed conclusions about the data quickly.

4.       So after I cleaned up my PC using every utility....and scanned the PC with this software....the result was like nothing has been removed...all what I had accessed in last few days stands out in a compiled tabulated form ready to be saved as a Excel file for record.So what exactly allows this info extraction in spite of assurances from utilities available.The most recent versions of Windows store information about the pages viewed by the browser in a file called index.dat. One of the index.dats, in turn, contains information pointing to other files used in the browsing session. Windows has 3 types of index.dat files, for the cache, history and cookie files, respectively.Obviously, viewing all 3 types will give us the best understanding of what browsing took place. So....its not simply erasing ur history that could save you at some time......there is much much more ........