Extracting Browser History Artifacts

When to Use

• When investigating user web activity as part of a forensic examination
• During insider threat investigations to establish patterns of data exfiltration
• When tracing user visits to malicious or policy-violating websites
• For correlating browser activity with other forensic artifacts and timelines
• When investigating phishing attacks to identify which links were clicked

Prerequisites

• Forensic image or access to user profile directories
• SQLite3 for querying browser databases
• Hindsight, BrowsingHistoryView, or DB Browser for SQLite
• Knowledge of browser artifact file locations per OS
• Python 3 with sqlite3 module for automated extraction
• Understanding of Chrome, Firefox, and Edge storage formats

Workflow

Step 1: Locate Browser Artifact Files

# Mount forensic image
mount -o ro,loop,offset=$((2048*512)) /cases/case-2024-001/images/evidence.dd /mnt/evidence

# Chrome artifact locations (Windows)
CHROME_WIN="/mnt/evidence/Users/suspect/AppData/Local/Google/Chrome/User Data/Default"
# Key files: History, Cookies, Login Data, Web Data, Bookmarks, Preferences,
#            Cache/, GPUCache/, Local Storage/, Session Storage/, IndexedDB/

# Firefox artifact locations (Windows)
FIREFOX_WIN="/mnt/evidence/Users/suspect/AppData/Roaming/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/*.default-release"
# Key files: places.sqlite, cookies.sqlite, formhistory.sqlite, logins.json,
#            key4.db, sessionstore.jsonlz4, webappsstore.sqlite

# Edge (Chromium) artifact locations (Windows)
EDGE_WIN="/mnt/evidence/Users/suspect/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Edge/User Data/Default"

# Copy artifacts to working directory
mkdir -p /cases/case-2024-001/browser/{chrome,firefox,edge}
cp -r "$CHROME_WIN"/{History,Cookies,Downloads,"Login Data","Web Data",Bookmarks} \
   /cases/case-2024-001/browser/chrome/ 2>/dev/null
cp -r $FIREFOX_WIN/{places.sqlite,cookies.sqlite,formhistory.sqlite,logins.json} \
   /cases/case-2024-001/browser/firefox/ 2>/dev/null
cp -r "$EDGE_WIN"/{History,Cookies,Downloads} \
   /cases/case-2024-001/browser/edge/ 2>/dev/null

# Hash artifacts for integrity
find /cases/case-2024-001/browser/ -type f -exec sha256sum {} \; \
   > /cases/case-2024-001/browser/artifact_hashes.txt

Step 2: Extract Chrome Browsing History and Downloads

# Query Chrome History database
sqlite3 /cases/case-2024-001/browser/chrome/History << 'SQL'
.headers on
.mode csv
.output /cases/case-2024-001/analysis/chrome_history.csv

SELECT
    urls.url,
    urls.title,
    datetime(urls.last_visit_time/1000000-11644473600, 'unixepoch') AS last_visit,
    urls.visit_count,
    urls.typed_count,
    visits.transition & 0xFF AS transition_type
FROM urls
LEFT JOIN visits ON urls.id = visits.url
ORDER BY urls.last_visit_time DESC;
SQL

# Extract Chrome downloads
sqlite3 /cases/case-2024-001/browser/chrome/History << 'SQL'
.headers on
.mode csv
.output /cases/case-2024-001/analysis/chrome_downloads.csv

SELECT
    current_path,
    tab_url AS source_url,
    total_bytes,
    datetime(start_time/1000000-11644473600, 'unixepoch') AS start_time,
    datetime(end_time/1000000-11644473600, 'unixepoch') AS end_time,
    state,
    danger_type,
    mime_type
FROM downloads
ORDER BY start_time DESC;
SQL

# Extract Chrome search terms
sqlite3 /cases/case-2024-001/browser/chrome/History << 'SQL'
.headers on
.mode csv
.output /cases/case-2024-001/analysis/chrome_searches.csv

SELECT
    term,
    urls.url,
    datetime(urls.last_visit_time/1000000-11644473600, 'unixepoch') AS search_time
FROM keyword_search_terms
JOIN urls ON keyword_search_terms.url_id = urls.id
ORDER BY urls.last_visit_time DESC;
SQL

Step 3: Extract Firefox Browsing History

# Query Firefox places.sqlite for history
sqlite3 /cases/case-2024-001/browser/firefox/places.sqlite << 'SQL'
.headers on
.mode csv
.output /cases/case-2024-001/analysis/firefox_history.csv

SELECT
    moz_places.url,
    moz_places.title,
    datetime(moz_historyvisits.visit_date/1000000, 'unixepoch') AS visit_date,
    moz_places.visit_count,
    moz_historyvisits.visit_type
FROM moz_places
JOIN moz_historyvisits ON moz_places.id = moz_historyvisits.place_id
ORDER BY moz_historyvisits.visit_date DESC;
SQL

# Extract Firefox bookmarks
sqlite3 /cases/case-2024-001/browser/firefox/places.sqlite << 'SQL'
.headers on
.mode csv
.output /cases/case-2024-001/analysis/firefox_bookmarks.csv

SELECT
    moz_bookmarks.title,
    moz_places.url,

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