RESEARCH ARTICLE

Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics:

Facebook and Skype as Case Studies
Teing Yee Yang1, Ali Dehghantanha2, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo3*, Zaiton Muda1
1 Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, Universiti
Putra Malaysia, UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia, 2 The School of Computing, Science & Engineering,
Newton Building, University of Salford, Salford, Greater Manchester, United Kingdom, 3 Information
Assurance Research Group, University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

* [email protected]

Abstract
Instant messaging (IM) has changed the way people communicate with each other. How-
ever, the interactive and instant nature of these applications (apps) made them an attractive
choice for malicious cyber activities such as phishing. The forensic examination of IM apps
for modern Windows 8.1 (or later) has been largely unexplored, as the platform is relatively
new. In this paper, we seek to determine the data remnants from the use of two popular Win-
dows Store application software for instant messaging, namely Facebook and Skype on a
Windows 8.1 client machine. This research contributes to an in-depth understanding of the
types of terrestrial artefacts that are likely to remain after the use of instant messaging ser-
OPEN ACCESS
vices and application software on a contemporary Windows operating system. Potential
Citation: Yang TY, Dehghantanha A, Choo K-KR,
artefacts detected during the research include data relating to the installation or uninstalla-
Muda Z (2016) Windows Instant Messaging App
Forensics: Facebook and Skype as Case Studies. tion of the instant messaging application software, log-in and log-off information, contact
PLoS ONE 11(3): e0150300. doi:10.1371/journal. lists, conversations, and transferred files.
pone.0150300

Editor: Muhammad Khurram Khan, King Saud

University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, SAUDI ARABIA

Received: December 29, 2015 1. Introduction

Accepted: February 11, 2016
Instant messaging (IM) is popular with both traditional computing device users (i.e., personal
Published: March 16, 2016 computers and laptops) and mobile device users by allowing them to exchange information
Copyright: © 2016 Yang et al. This is an open with peers in real time using text messaging, voice messaging, and file sharing. According to
access article distributed under the terms of the the report of Radicati Group [1], the number of worldwide IM accounts (with the exception of
Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits mobile messaging) in 2015 amounted to over 3.2 billion which is expected to rise above 3.8 bil-
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any lion by the end of 2019.
medium, provided the original author and source are
Similar to other popular consumer technologies, IM services have also been exploited to
credited.
commit frauds and scams [2–4], disseminate malware [5], groom children online with the pur-
Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are pose of sexual exploitation [6–9] etc. The chat logs can provide a great deal of information of
within the paper.
evidential value to investigators [10, 11], which may often comprise a suspect’s physical loca-
Funding: These authors have no support or funding tion, true identity, transactional information, incriminating conversations, and other person
to report. information i.e., email address and bank account number [12].
Competing Interests: The authors have declared Due to the increased user privacy requirements [13] and demands for data redundancy, it is
that no competing interests exist. increasingly challenging to collect evidential data from the IM service provider (ISP). The data

PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300 March 16, 2016 1 / 29

 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

are often protected by proprietary protocols, encryption, etc., making forensic practitioners vir-
tually impossible to collect meaningful information from external network [14]. Moreover, col-
lecting data from a multi-tenancy environment may breach the data privacy policies of the
ISPs [15]. Even if the artefacts could be identified, the challenges are compounded by cross-
jurisdictional investigations that may prohibit cross-border transfer of information [16–18]. In
the worst-case scenario, the ISPs may not even log the incriminating conversations to reduce
traffic to the messaging servers [19].
Depending on the IM application in use, the client device can often provide potential for
alternative methods for recovery of the IM artefacts [20–22]. In addition to addressing the pos-
sible issues in relation to evidence acquisition from the ISPs, the terrestrial artefacts can be use-
ful in establishing whether a suspect has a direct connection to a crime, as the suspect may
claim he/she is a victim of identity theft otherwise. While a practitioner should be cognisant of
techniques of digital forensics, it is just as important to maintain an up-to-date understanding
of the potential artefacts that are recoverable from different types of IM products. Hence, in
this paper, we seek to identify potential terrestrial artefacts that may remain after the use of the
popular Facebook and Skype Windows Store application software (henceforth the Store app)
on a Windows 8.1 client machine. Similar to the approaches of Quick and Choo [23–25], we
attempt to answer the following questions in this research:
1. What data remains on a Windows 8.1 device and their locations on a hard drive after a user
has used Facebook app version 1.4.0.9 and Skype app version 3.1.0.1007.
2. What data remains in Random Access Memory (RAM) after a user has used the above IM
services or apps on a Windows 8.1 device?
3. What data can be seen in network traffic?
Findings from this research will contribute to the forensic community’s understanding of
the types of terrestrial artefacts that are likely to remain after the use of IM services and apps
on devices running the newer Windows operating system.
The structure of this paper is as follows. Section 2 discusses the background and related
work. Section 3 outlines the research methodology and experiment environment and setup. In
Sections 4 to 6, we present and discuss the findings from the IM apps. We then conclude the
paper and outline potential future research areas in the last section.

2. Literature Review
A Windows Store app (formerly known as Metro app) mimics the touch-screen-friendly
mobile apps, while retaining the traditional mouse and keyboard inputs [26]. The installation
is handled exclusively by the Windows Store, which bypasses the execution of executable files
[27]. The Store apps are licensed to Microsoft account, giving the users the right to install a
same app on up to eighty-one different Windows 8 (or newer) desktop clients under the same
login [28]. The concept also enables the users to roam the app credentials (stored within the
Credential Locker) between the corresponding devices [29].
The Store apps are predominantly built on Windows Runtime. In addition to offering the
developers a multi-language programming environment, the architecture isolates the apps
from the file system for security and stability [26]. The app itself is a package (.APPX file) that
incorporates the app’s code, resources, libraries, and a manifest up to a combined limit of 8GB
[26]. Each Store app is represented by a package ID, which is often denoted by the package
name followed by its build version, the target platform, and the alphanumeric publisher identi-
fication (ID). The installation and application folders can be generally located in %Program

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 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Files%\WindowsApps\[Package ID] and %localappdata%\packages\[Package ID] respectively

[30, 31].
The application data, correspond to the app states [26], are stored in three (3) categories:
local, roaming, and temp states; each of which creates a subfolder in the application folder. The
‘LocalState’ folder holds device-specific data typically loaded to support the app functionality,
such as temporary files and caches, recently viewed items, and other behavioural settings. The
‘RoamingState’ folder stores data shared between the same app running on multiple Windows
devices under the same login. The data may include account configurations, favourites, game
scores and progress, important URIs etc. Meanwhile, the ‘TempState’ folder houses data tem-
porarily suspended or terminated from the memory for restoration purposes, such as page nav-
igation history, unsaved form data etc. The application data persist throughout the lifetime of a
Store app, with the exception of the temp data which may be subject to disk clean up [26].
The application cache/data can be stored using caching mechanisms like HTML5 local stor-
age and IndexedDB (for Store apps written in HTML and JavaScript) as well as other third-
party database options like SQLite [32]. In the absence of encryption mechanism, the data can
aid in reconstruction of user events such as cloud storage [28], emails [30], web browsing his-
tory [33], conversations [34], and other user-specific events [35], depending on the Store app
in use.
Instant messaging has been the subject of numerous digital forensic studies since the mid
2000’s. In a series of early works, Dickson identified that artefacts of the client-based American
Online Messenger version 5.5 (AIM) [16], MSN Messenger version 7.5 [36], Yahoo Messenger
version 7.0 [37], and Trillian version 3.1 [38] could be recovered from the registry, user set-
tings, and other application-specific files on the hard drive of a Windows XP machine. By
applying keyword search, the author was able to recover portion of the conversation history
from unstructured datasets such as memory dumps, slack space, free space, and swap files in
plain text, even with the absence of chat logging. The findings were echoed by several others
studies with respect to Digsby [39–41], Windows Live Messenger 8.0 [42], and Pidgin 2.0 [43].
However, Levendoski et al. [44] concluded that artefacts of the Yahoo Messenger client pro-
duced a different directory structure on Windows Vista/7. Kiley et al. [19] investigated web-
based IM apps (i.e., AIM Express, Google Talk, Meebo, and E-Buddy) and found that artefacts
of the contact lists, conversations, and approximate time of the last conversation could only be
recovered from memory dump and hard disk’s free space, although reference to the URLs, last
access times, and view count information could be recovered from the web browsing history.
Wong et al. [45] and Al Mutawa et al. [46] demonstrated that artefacts of the Facebook
web-application could be recovered from memory dumps and web browsing cache in Java-
script Object Notation (JSON) and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) formats. Al Mutawa
et al. [46] also described a methodology for investigating the Arabic string artefacts on a com-
puter device. In another study, Al Mutawa et al. [47] investigated artefacts of the Facebook and
several other IM applications on iPhone 4, Blackberry Torch 9800, and Samsung GT-i9000
Galaxy S. The authors were able to extract records of the contact list and conversation from the
logical images, with the exception of the BlackBerry devices.
Said et al. [48] investigated Facebook and other IM applications for iPhone 3G and 3GS,
Blackberry Bold 7000 and 900, Samsung Omnia II i8000, Nokia E71, and Ericsson G900. Of all
the mobile devices investigated, it was determined that only BlackBerry Bold 9700 and iPhone
3G/3GS provided evidence of Facebooking unencrypted. The study also revealed that artefacts
of the Facebook applications were unique to the mobile devices investigated (i.e., iPhone 3GS
and iphone 3G had the same version of Facebook v3.4.2 but maintained different files in the
application folders). Walnycky et al. [49] added that artefacts of the Facebook Messenger could
vary depending on user settings, OS version, and manufacturer. Levinson et al. [50]

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 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

demonstrated that records of the recent Facebook chats stored in the property list of the Face-
book Messenger for iOS can assist forensic practitioners with timeline analysis.
Examining iTunes backups rather than disk images, Norouzizadeh et al. [10] and Tso et al.
[51] concluded that it is possible to extract users’ personal data, messages, contact lists and
posts Facebook app from the iTunes backup of iPhone 4 and iPhone 5s, respectively. Chu et al.
[52] focused on live data acquisition from the desktop personal computer (PC) and was able to
identify distinct strings that will assist forensic practitioners with reconstruction of the previous
Facebook sessions. Wongyai and Charoenwatana [53] determined that objects recovered from
a network analysis of Facebook homepage can be broadly categorised into 24 types based on
properties such as file type, naming pattern, IP address, and location or section on the page.
Sgaras et al. [54] analysed Skype and several other VoIP applications for iOS and Android
platforms. Although footprints of the installations, user profiles, conversations, contact lists,
and network traffic could be located for all the VoIP applications investigated, it was concluded
that the Android apps store far less artefacts than of the iOS apps. Simon and Slay [55] found
that remnants of Skype communication, communication history, contacts, passwords, and
encryption keys could be recovered from physical memory dump. However, Teng and Lin [56]
demonstrated that using SQLite editor tools, one could easily modify Skype log files. Unsur-
prisingly, other studies have suggested that the network traffic behaviour varies among differ-
ent versions [57, 58].
In the only article on Windows Store apps for instant messaging (at the time of this
research), Lee and Chung [34] studied the third party Viber and Line apps and identified that
the package identifications (IDs) could be discerned from ‘2414F_C7A.ViberFreePhoneCall-
sText_p61zvh252yqyr’ and ‘NA_VER.LINEwin8_8ptj331gd3tyt’ respectively. By analysing the
app caches, the authors managed to locate records of account logins, contacts, chats, trans-
ferred file unencrypted. However, the study is only limited to dead analysis of the hard disk.
Hence, there is a need to develop a further understanding of the implications of the Windows
Store apps for IM forensics–a gap that this paper aims to contribute to.

3. Research Methodology
The examination procedure in this research is adapted from the four-stage digital forensic
framework of McKemmish [59], namely: identification of digital evidence, preservation of digi-
tal evidence, analysis, and presentation. The purpose is to enable acquisition of realistic data
similar to that found in real world investigations. This paper mainly focuses on the analysis
stage, although we also briefly discuss the evidence source identification, preservation, and pre-
sentation to demonstrate how the framework could be applied in practice.
The first step of the experiment involved the creation of eight (8) fictional accounts to play
the role of suspects and victims in this research–see Table 1. The IM accounts were assigned
with a unique ‘display icon’ and username which was not used within the respective IM apps
and Windows operating system. This eases identification of the user roles. Next was to create
the test environments for the suspects and the victims, which consisted two (2) control base
VMware Workstations (VMs) version 9.0.0 build 812388 running Windows 8.1 Professional
(Service Pack 1, 64 bit, build 9600). As explained by Quick and Choo [23–25], using physical
hardware to undertake setup, erasing, copying, and re-installing would have been an onerous
exercise. Moreover, a virtual machine allows room for error by enabling the test environment
to be reverted to a restore point should the results are unfavourable. The workstations were
configured with the minimal space (2GB of physical memory and 20GB hard drive space) in
order to reduce the time required to analyse the considerable amounts of snapshots in the latter
stage.

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 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Table 1. Account details for IM experiments.

IM Experiment Username Email Role

Facebook Messenger Forensics John Adkins [email protected] Suspect
Jack Jeffry [email protected] Suspect 2
Adam Jacobs [email protected] Victim 1
Samuel Traviss [email protected] Victim 2
Kelvin Sky [email protected] Victim 3
Skype Forensics Adam Thomson/ adam.thomson84 [email protected] Suspect
Harold Cornwall/ harold.cornwall34 [email protected] Victim 1
Alicia Richardson/ alicia.rich19 [email protected] Victim 2
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.t001

In the third step, we conducted a predefined set of activities to simulate various real world
scenarios of using the apps on each workstation/test environment. The base assumptions are
that the practitioner encounters a live system running Microsoft Windows 8.1 in a typical
home environment. Similar to the approaches of Quick and Choo [23–25], the 3111th email
message of the University of California (UC) Berkeley Enron email dataset (downloaded from
http://bailando.sims.berkeley.edu/enron_email.html on 24th September 2014) was used to cre-
ate the sample files and saved as SuspectToVictim.rtf, SuspectToVictim.txt, SuspectToVictim.
docx, SuspectToVictim.zip, SuspectToVictim.jpg (printscreen), VictimToSuspect.rtf, Victim-
ToSuspect.txt, VictimToSuspect.docx, VictimToSuspect.jpg (printscreen), and VictimToSus-
pect.zip to simulate the transferring and receiving of files of different formats using the IM
apps. As the filenames suggest, the ‘SuspectToVictim’ (and ‘VictimToSuspect’) files were
placed on the suspect’s workstation (and victims’ workstations respectively) and subsequently
transferred to the victims’ workstations (and suspect’s workstation respectively).
The experiments were predominantly undertaken in NATed (where NAT stands for Net-
work Address Translation) network environment and without firewall outbound restriction to
represent a typical IM situation. Wireshark was deployed on the host machine to capture the
network traffic from the suspect’s workstation for each scenario. After each experiment was
carried out, we saved a copy of the network capture file in.PCAP format, and acquired a bit-
stream (dd) image of the virtual memory (.VMEM) file prior to shutdown. We then took a
snapshot of each workstation after being shutdown and made a forensic copy of the virtual
disk (.VMDK) file in Encase Evidence (E01) format. This resulted in the creation of fifteen (15)
snapshots (each for each environment) as highlighted in Table 2, and Figs 1 and 2. The decision
to instantiate the physical memory dumps and hard disks with the virtual disk and memory
files was to prevent the datasets from being modified with the use of memory/image acquisition
tools [23, 25].
The final step of this research was to analyse the datasets using a range of forensically recog-
nised tools (as highlighted in Table 3) and present the findings. Both indexed and non-indexed
as well as Unicode and non-Unicode string searches were included as part of the evidence
searches. The experiments were repeated at least thrice (at different dates) to ensure consis-
tency of findings.

4. Analysis of the Facebook App

Facebook (Messenger) is an IM service offered by Facebook–one of the most popular social
network platforms with more than one billion daily active users on average [60]. The Store app
was officially released on 17th October 2013 in conjunction with the launch of Windows 8.1
[61]. It allows users to view status updates, news feeds, send and receive text and voice, as well

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 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Table 2. Details of VM snapshots created for this research.

IM forensics Snapshot Description

1.0 Base-Snapshot A control base snapshot was made to create the control media to determine changes from each IM
scenario.
Facebook F1.1 Install-Snapshot Using a duplicate copy of the control base snapshot (1.0), we accessed the Windows Store to
forensics download and subsequently install the Facebook app version 1.4.0.9.
F1.1.1 Login-Snapshot A snapshot was made of the install snapshot (F1.1) to examine the artefacts from the Facebook login.
F1.1.2 Friend-Snapshot A second snapshot was created of the install snapshot (F1.1) to examine the process of searching
and adding friend using the Facebook app.
F1.1.3 Chat-Snapshot Another snapshot was made of the install snapshot (F1.1) to undertake scripted conversations and
file transfers using the Facebook app. The conversations were limited to two participants.
F1.1.3.1 Uninstall-Snapshot A snapshot was made of the chat snapshot (F1.1.3) to examine the data remnants left behind after
uninstalling the Facebook app. The app was uninstalled using the uninstall function on the start
screen.
F1.1.4 Group Chat- A final snapshot was made of the install snapshot (F1.1) to examine the artefacts left by the group
Snapshot chat feature of the Facebook app. The suspect’s account was used to add all the victims into a group
chat namely ‘DeviGroup’. A mock conversation was subsequently taken between the suspect and the
victims.
Skype S1.1 Install-Snapshot Using a duplicate copy of the control base snapshot (1.0), we updated the Skype app to version
forensics 3.1.0.1007 (the latest version at the time of this research).
S1.1.1 Login-Snapshot A snapshot was made of the install snapshot (S1.1) to examine the login artefacts of the Skype app.
S1.1.2 Contact-Snapshot A second snapshot was made of the install snapshot (S1.1) to examine the process of adding contact
using the Skype app. The contacts were subsequently synced to the Windows Live (login) account to
identify additional artefacts in relation to the contact syncing.
S1.1.3 IM-Snapshot A third snapshot was made of the install snapshot (S1.1) to undertake scripted IM conversations and
file transfers using the Skype app. The conversations were limited to two participants.
S1.1.3.1 Uninstall-Snapshot We duplicated the IM snapshot (S1.1.3) to examine the data remnants left behind after uninstalling
the Skype app. Uninstallation was undertaken using the uninstall function on the start screen.
S1.1.4 Group Chat- Another snapshot was created of the install snapshot (S1.1) to examine the group chat artefacts of
Snapshot the Skype app. The suspect’s account was used to add all the victims into a group chat namely
‘DeviSkypeGroup’. A mock conversation was subsequently taken between the suspect and the
victims.
S1.1.5 Voice and Video Additional copy of the install snapshot (S1.1) was made to examine the process of voice and video
Call-Snapshot calling using the Skype app. We first made a Skype to Skype voice call from the suspect to victim,
followed by a video call during the voice call.
S1.1.6 Video Message- A final copy of the install snapshot (S1.1) was made to investigate the process of creating video
Snapshot message using the Skype app. A video message was made and subsequently sent from the
suspect’s VM to the victim’s VM.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.t002

as features such as file transfer and image sharing. In this section, we present artefacts of instal-
lation, uninstallation, logins, contact lists, conversations, transferred files, and notifications of
the Facebook app (version 1.4.0.9) on Windows 8.1.

Fig 1. VM snapshots created for Facebooking experiments.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.g001

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 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Fig 2. VM snapshots created for Skype experiments.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.g002

4.1 Installation of the Facebook App

Examinations of the directory listings observed that the package ID (for the Facebook app) can
be differentiated from ‘Facebook.Facebook_1.4.0.9_x64__8xx8rvfyw5nnt’. A closer examina-
tion of the registry entries created during the installation observed that the installation time
could be identified from the ‘InstallTime’ entry within the HKEY_USERS\<SID>\Software
\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppModel\Repository
\Families\Faceook.Facebook_8xx8rvfyw5nnt\Facebook.Facebook_1.4.0.9_x64_8xx8rvfyw5nnt
branch in 64-bit FILETIME Hex value in Big Endian format.
A search for the package ID ‘Facebook.Facebook_1.4.0.9_x64__8xx8rvfyw5nnt’ in the Win-
dows Store logs (resided at %AppData%\Local\Temp\winstore.log and %AppData%\Local
\Packages\winstore_cw5n1h2txyewy\AC\Temp\winstore.log) located supporting timestamp
information such as the dates when the app was first launched and updated. Moreover, analysis
of the prefetch files revealed the last run time and number of times the app has been loaded in
‘FACEBOOK.EXE.pf’. As for event logs, there was additional timestamp information which
indicated the accessed times in ‘Application.evtx’, ‘Microsoft-WS-Licensing%4Admin.evtx’,
‘Microsoft-Windows-AppModel-Runtime%4Admin.evtx’, ‘Microsoft-Windows-AppXDe-
ploymentServer%4Operational.evtx’, ‘Microsoft-Windows-Audio%4PlaybackManager.evtx’,
‘Microsoft-Windows-CoreApplication%4Operational.evtx’, ‘Microsoft-Windows-PushNotifi-
cation-Platform%4Operational.evtx’, ‘Microsoft-Windows-Resource-Exhaustion-Resolver%
4Operational.evtx’, ‘Microsoft-Windows-SettingSync%4Debug.evtx’, ‘Microsoft-Windows-
Shell-Core%4Operational.evtx’, ‘Microsoft-Windows-TWinUI%4Operational.evtx’, ‘Micro-
soft-Windows-Windows Firewall With Advanced Security%4Firewall.evtx’, and ‘System.evtx’.
Examinations of the running processes using the ‘pslist’ function of Volatility determined
that the process name could be discerned from ‘Facebook.exe’. Fig 3 illustrates that the ‘pslist’
output also included the process identifier (PID), parent process identifiers (PPID), and the
process initiation and termination time. The PID could prove useful for correlating data associ-
ated with the the app during further analysis of the RAM (i.e., contextualising a string using
the ‘Yarascan’ function of Volatility).

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 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Table 3. Tools used for IM analysis on Windows 8.1.

Tool Usage
FTK Imager Version 3.2.0.0 To create forensic images for the.VMDK files.
dd version 1.3.4–1 To produce a bit-for-bit image of the.VMEM files.
Autopsy 3.1.1 To parse the file system, produce directory listings,
as well as extracting or analysing stored files,
browsing history, ‘NTUSER.dat’ registry files (using
the RegRipper plugin), ‘pagefile.sys’ Windows
swap file, and unallocated spaces located within
the forensics images of VMDK files.
HxD Version 1.7.7.0 To conduct keyword searches in the unstructured
datasets.
Volatility 2.4 To analyse the running processes (using the ‘pslist’
function), network statistics (using the ‘netscan’
function), and detecting the location of a string
(using the ‘yarascan’ function) recorded in the
physical memory dumps.
Photorec 7.0 To data carve the unstructured datasets.
Skype Chatsync Reader To analyse the content of Skype’s ‘Chatsync’ file.
SQLite Browser Version 3.4.0 To view the contents of SQLite database.
Wireshark version 1.10.1 To analyse the network traffic.
Network Miner version 1.6.1 To analyse and data carve the network files.
Whois command To determine the registration information of the IP
addresses.
Nirsoft Web Browser Passview 1.19.1 To recover the credential details stored within web
browsers.
Nirsoft cache viewer, ChromeCacheView 1.56, To analyse the web browsing cache.
MozillaCacheView 1.62, IECacheView 1.53
BrowsingHistoryView v.1.60 To analyse the web browsing history.
Thumbcacheviewer Version 1.0.2.7 To examine the Windows thumbnail cache.
Windows Event Viewer Version 1.0 To view the Windows event logs.
Windows File Analyser 2.6.0.0 To analyse the Windows prefetch and link files.
NTFS Log Tracker V1.2 To parse and analyse the $LogFile, $MFT, and
$UsnJrnl New Technology File System (NTFS)
files.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.t003

4.2 Logins
In our experiments, it was observed that Facebook maintains a wealth of cache data for the
Store app in a number of SQLite databases located in %AppData%\Local\Packages\Facebook.
Facebook_1.4.0.9_x64__8xx8rvfyw5nnt\LocalState\<User specific Facebook ID>\DB\, such as
Analytics.sqlite, FriendRequests.sqlite, Friends.sqlite, Messages.sqlite, Notifications.sqlite, and
Stories.sqlite. However, it is noteworthy that these databases will only appear when the user is
logged in from the app. The database of interest with the logins is Analytics.sqlite, which con-
tains records of the login time in Unix epoch format. The records can be discerned from the
‘name’ and ‘module’ table columns which reference ‘login’ and ‘login_events’ in the ‘analytic-
s_logs’ table, respectively—see Fig 4. Within %AppData%\Local\Packages\Facebook.Face-
book_8xx8rvfyw5nnt\AC\InetCache\<Cache ID>\ and %AppData%\Local\Packages
\Facebook.Facebook_8xx8rvfyw5nnt\AC\.local_cache\ there were copies of profile and cover
pictures of the user and the contacts, as well as other pictures which appeared on the Facebook
timelines. The pictures may provide invaluable leads that lay the groundwork for follow-up via
traditional investigative techniques.

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 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Fig 3. The ‘pslist’ output for the Facebook app.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.g003

A search for the login password produced no matches in the forensic image and memory
dump. An examination of the network traffic revealed that the host first established a session
with Symantec Certification Authority (i.e., IP address 23.58.43.27) for certificate authentica-
tion. Afterwards, the host accessed the nearest Akamai content delivery servers (i.e., IP
addresses 23.62.109. ) and Facebook servers from different countries (i.e., IP addresses
31.13. . and 115.164.13. in our research) on port 443 (hence HTTPS), which we theorised to
retrieve the profile and timeline information. Although the network traffic was encrypted and
the login credentials were not recovered, we were able to correlate the IP addresses with the
timestamp information to determine when the app was started up and the duration of Face-
book use in our research.

4.3 Friend Lists

Contact (or ‘friend’ in the context of Facebook) lists can be a useful reference point for a sus-
pect’s social network. A search for the suspect’s profile name in the directory listing determined
that artefacts of the contact lists can only be located in the Friends.sqlite database. The table of
particular interest is the ‘friends’ table, which holds a list of user identifications (UIDs), full
names, first names, middle names, last names, email addresses, phone numbers, profile links,
communication rank (frequency of communication), and birth dates associated with the
friends added by the user as shown in Fig 5. Moreover, the ‘profiles’ table provide supplemen-
tary information relating to the profiles viewed by the user such as the profile type (private pro-
file or page), description (if any), URLs to the profiles, cover photo metadata (i.e., photo IDs,
sizes, URLs, titles, and creation times for the cover photos), number of mutual friends associ-
ated with the profiles (if any), whether a friend request can be sent to the profiles, and the user
has liked the page or is a subscriber.

4.4 Conversations and Transferred Files

Facebook allows users to transfer files up to 15MB. When a file is uploaded using the chat win-
dow, it will be attached alongside the line of chat messages (if any) and appear as a download
link. The sender is allowed to abort a transfer part way through the process. The downloaded
files were saved under %Downloads%\ by default, all of which were given an Alternate Data
Stream (ADS) ZoneTransfer marker (ZoneID) with reading 'ZoneID = 3', indicating that the
files were downloaded from an Internet zone [62]. This also suggests that when a user down-
loads a file using the Facebook app, there will be records remaining in Windows system files
such as $LogFile, $MFT, and $UsnJrnl to indicate the filenames, directory paths, and time-
stamps for the downloaded files; an excerpt of the $LogFile entries (recovered from the sus-
pect’s workstation) is shown in Fig 6. Analysis of the thumbnail caches stored within %

Fig 4. Login records located in the ‘analytics_logs’ table of Analytics.sqlite database.

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 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Fig 5. The ‘friends’ table of Friends.sqlite database.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.g005

AppData%\Local\Packages\Package ID\AC\INetCache\<Cache ID>\ and %AppData%\Local

\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\ (henceforth thumbcache) determined that copies of the trans-
ferred or downloaded can be recovered. This creates potential for alternative methods for
recovery of the deleted files, but the results may not be definitive.
Examinations of the cache databases determined that artefacts of the conversations could be
recovered from the Analytics.sqlite and Messages.sqlite databases. Within the ‘analytics_logs’
table of the former there were timestamp records which reflected the times when the chat tab
was turned on, conversations were initiated by the user, as well as files were downloaded. The
entry of which could be discerned from the ‘name’ table column which referenced ‘chat_turne-
d_on’, ‘message_sent_attempt’ or ‘message_send_state’, and ‘file_downloaded’ respectively.
Meanwhile, details about the conversations and file transfers were recovered from the ‘mes-
sages’ table in the latter. Each thread created an entry which comprised the thread ID, conver-
sation texts (if any), UID and username of the sender and the receiver, a count of the number
of times the message was sent, file attachment metadata (i.e., sender’s username and ID as well
as filename, file size, and format references for the files transferred as shown in Fig 7), and
other relevant information as shown in Fig 8. Additionally, the ‘users’ table (of the Messages.
sqlite database) could provide additional information pertaining to the correspondents includ-
ing the UIDs, email addresses, Facebook names, last active times and other information as
detailed in Fig 9.
Undertaking data carving of the memory captures and unallocated space only produced
matches to the transferred/downloaded sample files. By searching for terms unique to the app
cache databases (i.e., table column names), it was possible to recover complete/partial frag-
ments of the databases in plain text (similar to other IM scenarios). However, there was no
common footer information to indicate the file structure. Fig 10 illustrates that records of con-
versations from the ‘messages’ table (of Messsages.sqlite database) can be located using the
table column name ‘m_mid’. Moreover, we were also able to locate copies of Asynchronous
JavaScript and XML (AJAX) objects for the Facebook chat in the memory captures. The

Fig 6. $LogFile entries for the Facebook app’s file download.

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 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Fig 7. File attachment metadata recorded in the ‘attachments’ field of the ‘messages’ table.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.g007

artefacts could provide a clear indication of contact in Unix epoch format, Facebook usernames
and UIDs of the correspondents, and conversation texts as depicted in Fig 11. The JSON cod-
ing could be a suitable search keyword for future searches. The presence of the remnants in the
memory space of ‘Facebook.exe’ confirmed that the texts were associated with the Facebook
app.
Inspecting the network traffic, it was observed that the transferred files were uploaded to IP
addresses 31.13.70. , 31.13.67. , and 31.13.67. with URLs referencing ‘upload.facebook.com’.
The downloaded files were seen from IP addresses 31.13.70. , and the URLs were prefixed with
‘cdn.fbsdx.com’. Meanwhile, the IP addresses i.e., 31.13.79. and 31.13.76.102 were observed in
relation to the conversations, with URLs referencing ‘5-edge-chat.facebook.com’—see Table 4
for details. Although the contents were encrypted completely, the IP addresses and URLs
highlighted as part of our research may assist a practitioner in scoping the Facebook activities
undertaken by a suspect in future investigations. Additionally, the IP addresses can be corre-
lated with the ‘netscan’ output (of Volatility) to obtain information regarding the running pro-
cess (i.e., PID, process creation time, and socket states) as detailed in Fig 12.

4.5 Real-time Notifications

Facebook notifications prompt users in real-time when activities such as messages and com-
ments were posted on their walls, or wall post tagging took place. Analyses of the directory list-
ings only revealed records of the notifications in the ‘notifications’ table of Notifications.sqlite
database. The records contained the senders’ UIDs, notification texts, URLs, update and crea-
tion times, whether a notification has been read by the user (‘1’ for read and ‘0’ for unread),
and other options useful to aid timeline analysis (see Fig 13).

Fig 8. The ‘messages’ table of Messages.sqlite database.

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 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Fig 9. The ‘users’ table of Messages.sqlite database.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.g009

4.6 Uninstallation of the Facebook App

Uninstallation of the Facebook app did not create uninstallation files. When the uninstallation
was taken place, only the installation folder remained, but was moved to %Program Files%
\WindowsApps\Deleted. Other footprints such as remnants from RAM, unallocated space, and
system files such as pagefile.sys, shortcuts, event logs, prefetch files, $LogFile, $MFT, as well as
$UsnJrnl were not affected by uninstallation process. The uninstallation also created additional
references to the directory paths and timestamp information for the files removed during the
uninstallation in $LogFile, $MFT, as well as $UsnJrnl.

5. Analysis of the Skype App

Skype is a popular IM and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) application that provides free
IM services, audio and video calls between computers and other mobile devices [63]. With the
recent launch of Windows 8.1, Skype is now an integrated Windows service. The most recent
version of Skype uses the Super Wideband Audio Codec (SILK) [64]. The overlay peer-to-peer
network consists of a combination of ordinary and supernodes [57]. An ordinary node is a typ-
ical Skype application that provides the users the ability to place calls and send text messages.
The supernode serves as a proxy to relay information between nodes with firewall restrictions
and an intermediary to handle authentication and user lookups during logins [57].
In this section, we present results of our investigation of artefacts left behind after the use of
the Skype (Windows store) app version 3.1.0.1007 on Windows 8.1, such as installation direc-
tory paths, usernames, passwords, text of conversations, transferred or downloaded files, rec-
ords of video and voice calls, and the associated timestamps.

5.1 Installation of the Skype App

Analysis of the directory listing identified that the package ID could be discerned from ‘Micro-
soft.SkypeApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c’. The package ID was then used to correlate the ‘InstallTime’
registry entry, Windows Store logs, and event logs to determine the installation and accessed

Fig 10. Portion of the ‘messages’ table of Messages.sqlite database recovered from the memory
space of ‘Facebook.exe’.
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 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Fig 11. Remnants of Facebook chat recovered from suspect’s RAM in JSON.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.g011

times. An inspection of the prefetch files determined that the process name (for the Skype app)
was masqueraded with ‘WWAHost.exe’—the process name for the Store apps written in Java-
script [35]. As the same process name was located for more than one app of the same type, it
was not possible to determine exactly which prefetch file was associated with the Skype app.

Table 4. Network information observed for the Facebook app.

Registered owner IP address(es) URL(s) observed

Akamai Technologies Inc. 23.58.43.27 e8218.ce.akamaiedge.net, ocsp.ws.symantec.com.edgekey.net, gtssl-ocsp.geotrust.
com, g.symcd.com
Akamai Technologies Inc. 23.62.109.216 a2047.dspl.akamai.net, fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net
Akamai Technologies Inc. 23.62.109.87 a591.dspda2.akamai.net, fbcdn-vthumb-a.akamaihd.net.edgesuite.net
Facebook Malaysia 31.13.67.7, 31.13.67.23 scontent-a-kul.xx.fbcdn.net
Facebook USA 31.13.70.1 star.c10r.facebook.com, api.facebook.com, www.facebook.com, star.facebook.com,
upload.facebook.com
Facebook Singapore 31.13.79.246 star.c10r.facebook.com, api.facebook.com, star.facebook.com, 5-edge-chat.
facebook.com, upload.facebook.com, www.facebook.com
Facebook USA 31.13.70.7 scontent.xx.fbcdn.net, cdn.fbsbx.com
Facebook USA 31.13.76.102 star.c10r.facebook.com, 5-edge-chat.facebook.com
DiGi Telecommunications 115.164.13.20 a1854.dspmm1.akamai.net, fbcdn-photos-e-a.akamaihd.net.edgesuite.net, a1073.
Sdn Bhd dsw4.akamai.net, fbcdn-creative-a.akamaihd.net.edgesuite.net
DiGi Telecommunications 115.164.13.25 a1168.dsw4.akamai.net, fbstatic-a.akamaihd.net.edgesuite.net, a1531.dsw4.akamai.
Sdn Bhd net, fbexternal-a.akamaihd.net.edgesuite.net, a1170.dsw4.akamai.net, fbcdn-
dragon-a.akamaihd.net.edgesuite.net, a1854.dspmm1.akamai.net, fbcdn-photos-e-a.
akamaihd.net.edgesuite.net
DiGi Telecommunications 115.164.141.10 a1005.dspw42.akamai.net, fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net.edgesuite.net, a1005.
Sdn Bhd dspw42.akamai.net, fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net.edgesuite.net
DiGi Telecommunications 115.164.141.16, 115.164.141.17 a1406.dspw42.akamai.net, fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net.edgesuite.net, a1406.
Sdn Bhd dspw42.akamai.net, fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net.edgesuite.net
DiGi Telecommunications 115.164.141.32, 115.164.141.34, a1003.dspw41.akamai.net, fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net.edgesuite.net, a1404.
Sdn Bhd 115.164.141.40 dspw41.akamai.net, fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net.edgesuite.net, a1408.dspw43.
akamai.net, fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net.edgesuite.net
Facebook Inc. 173.252.103.16 orcart.vvv.facebook.com, orcart.facebook.com
Facebook Inc. 173.252.120.6 www.facebook.com
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 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Fig 12. The ‘netscan’ output for the Facebook app.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.g012

5.2 Logins
The crucial artefacts were predominantly located in the user-specific %AppData%\Local\Pack-
ages\Microsoft.SkypeApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c\LocalState\<Skype name>\main.db database (unless
otherwise stated, all tables will henceforth be referred to this database). Of particular interest
with respect to the logins is the ‘Accounts’ table, which maintains a list of details about the
Skype accounts logged in from the computer under investigation. The details comprise the
account registration times in Unix epoch format, Microsoft Live usernames, Skype names,
users’ full name, birth dates, gender, registered locations, phone numbers, email addresses,
homepage URLs (if any), mood texts and the creation times, time zones, and other information
useful for user profiling. To recover the avatars used by the users, the practitioner can access %
AppData%\Local\Packages\Microsoft.SkypeApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c\LocalState\avatars\.
Analysis of the Internet Explorer’s web browsing history was able to identify two URLs asso-
ciated with the logins, which were ‘login.skype.com/login?message=signin_continue&return_
url=. . .’ and ‘login.skype.com/login/sso?nonce=. . .’). The web browsing history can provide an
estimate of the number of times a suspect had accessed Skype as well as the corresponding
login times on the computer under investigation.
Examination of the %AppData%\Local\Packages\Microsoft.SkypeApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c\Local-
State\shared.xml file indicated the Skype name and node ID of the user in the ‘Default’ and
‘NodeID’ tags, respectively. The Skype name can prove useful for correlating events initiated by
the user during further analysis. Meanwhile, it was observed that the ‘HostCache’ tag maintains
a string of the supernode IP addresses and port pairs that Skype builds and refreshes regularly
[57]. Each of which is recorded in twelve character hexadecimal strings and prefixed with
‘0400050041050200’ [65]. The shared.xml file also held records of the last used external IP
address, port number, and last connected supernode IP address and port pair in the ‘LastIP’,
‘ListeningPort’, ‘Supernode’ tags in decimal format, respectively—see Fig 14; useful to support
network analysis.

Fig 13. The ‘notifications’ table of Notifications.sqlite database.

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 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Fig 14. Network information observed in shared.xml.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.g014

Although the process name was masqueraded with ‘WWAHost.exe’, we could correlate the
supernode IP addresses (obtained from the shared.xml file) with the ‘netscan’ output (of Vola-
tility) to determine the PID. For example, when we mapped the supernode IP address of
‘111.221.77.148’ with the ‘netscan’ output recovered from our research (see Fig 15), we
obtained the PID ‘656’. The PID could then be used to map the ‘pslist’ output (of Volatility) to
obtain additional information such as the PPID and process creation time as shown in Fig 16.
Further analysis of the unstructured datasets identified that the config.xml and shared.xml files
can be potentially carved from the memory dump and unallocated space using the header and
footer values of “3C 3F 78 6D 6C 20 76 65 72 73 69 6F 6E 3D 22. . . 3C 2F 55 49 3E 0D 0A 3C
2F 63 6F 6E 66 69 67 3E 0D 0A” and “3C 3F 78 6D 6C 20 76 65 72 73 69 6F 6E 3D 22. . .3C 2F
4C 69 62 3E 0D 0A 3C 2F 63 6F 6E 66 69 67 3E 0D 0A” respectively, but the findings may be
subject to software updates.
Upon launching the app, it was observed that the host first established a session with Edge-
Cast Networks to download Microsoft’s certificate revocation list (CRL) on port 80. The next
session was established with the Akamai servers to retrieve the contact (i.e., IP address
23.58.236.138) and advertisement information (i.e., IP address 23.58.154.154) on port 443.
Then, a session was established with the Microsoft servers (i.e., IP addresses 168.63.212.78 and
137.116.32.77 on port 443) for the traffic management service. When the logins occurred, the
host first established several TCP sessions with random supernodes, which we hypothesised for
user lookups [57]. Similar to the observation of Azab et al. [57], the IP addresses were associ-
ated with a combination of random and destined (33033) port numbers. The next servers
accessed were the Windows Live Messenger server (i.e., IP address 65.54.184.60), Windows

Fig 15. The ‘netscan’ output for the Skype app.

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 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Fig 16. The ‘pslist’ output for the Skype app.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.g016

Live servers (i.e., IP addresses 65.55.246. ), as well as Hotmail server (i.e., IP address
65.55.68.104) on port 443 for login authentication and buddy list retrieval. The sessions were
subsequently seen with random IP addresses on random UDP ports. Also observed were many
connections to the IP addresses 91.190.216. (referencing ‘rstwh.skype-cr.akadns.net’ and
‘1007.0.1.3.9.rst15.r.skype.net’) on random TCP port numbers, but we were unable to identify
the actual functions of the IP addresses due to lack of information from the URLs as well as
encrypted traffic—see Table 5 for details of the captured network traffic. Rebuilding the net-
work files using Netminer, we only recovered certificates that were used to authenticate the
HTTPS sites as well as HTML documents and image files from the HTTP sites. Since the net-
work traffic was encrypted (HTTPS), no credential information was recovered from the net-
work captures.

5.3 Contacts
Artefacts of the contacts were located in the ‘Contacts’ table. The artefacts comprised the Skype
names, full names, birth dates, gender details, languages, registered locations, contact numbers,
email addresses, homepage URLs (if any), mood texts, time zones, last online times, display
names, last accessed times, and other information as depicted in Fig 17. Examination of the %
AppData%\Local\Packages\Microsoft.SkypeApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c\LocalState\<Skype name>
\config.xml file revealed the user ID for the contact with whom the user last communicated as
well as the last accessed time. Each contact formed an opening and closing subtag in the 'u' tag
as shown in Fig 18.

Table 5. Network information observed for the Skype app.

Registered owner IP address(es) URL(s) observed

Akamai Technologies, 23.58.43.27 e8218.ce.akamaiedge.net, ocsp.ws.symantec.
Inc. com.edgekey.net, ocsp.verisign.com
Akamai Technologies, 23.58.236.138 e4593.g.akamaiedge.net, wildcard.skype.com.
Inc. edgekey.net
Akamai Technologies, 23.58.154.154 e8011.g.akamaiedge.net, wildcard.msads.net.
Inc. edgekey.net
Microsoft Corp. 65.54.184.60 baymsgr1010611.gateway.messenger.live.com
Microsoft Corp. 65.55.68.104 activesync.glbdns2.microsoft.com, m.hotmail.
com
Microsoft Corp. 65.55.246.85, 65.55.246.149 proxy-blu-people.directory.live.com.akadns.net,
proxy-blu-people.directory.live.com
Privately Owned 91.190.216.51, 91.190.216.56, 91.190.216.57, 91.190.216.58, rstwh.skype-cr.akadns.net, 1007.0.1.3.9.rst15.r.
Enterprise "M.O.D.A." 91.190.216.59, 91.190.216.62, 91.190.216.63, 91.190.216.66 skype.net
91.90.218.52, 91.90.218.53, 91.90.218.54, 91.90.218.55, 91.90.218.56,
91.90.218.58, 91.90.218.59, 91.90.218.66
CloudFlare, Inc. 108.162.232.204, 108.162.232.199 ocsp.globalsign.com, ocsp2.globalsign.com
Microsoft Corp. 168.63.212.78, 137.116.32.77 skypeecs-prod-ase-0.cloudapp.net, a.config.
skype.trafficmanager.net
EdgeCast Networks, Inc. 192.229.145.200 cs1.wpc.v0cdn.net, az361816.vo.msecnd.net,
certrevoc.vo.msecnd.net, mscrl.microsoft.com
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 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Fig 17. An excerpt of the ‘Contacts’ table of main.db database.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.g017

When the Skype account was synced with the Microsoft account, additional profile infor-
mation was recovered for the contacts in the address book located at %Appdata%\Local\Pack-
ages\microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\Indexed\LiveComm
\6e4f9dff0b76dd9b\1207120049\People\AddressBook\26000001_bef42d234ebd42.appcontent-
ms. Each contact formed an opening and closing ‘properties’ tag to house the search properties
such as search keywords, full names, home addresses, birth dates, phone numbers, and other
information as detailed in Fig 19, which may be of value for user profiling. Additionally,
the similar information could be located for the user in the %Appdata%\Local\Packages\
microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\Indexed\LiveComm
\6e4f9dff0b76dd9b\120712-0049\People\Me\24000001_7b20c4c2b2382.appcontent-ms file.

5.4 IM Conversations and Transferred Files

Examinations of the directory listings determined that the files downloaded were saved in %
Downloads%\Microsoft.SkypeApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c!App\ and %AppData%\Local\Packages\Micro-
soft.SkypeApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c\LocalState\<Skype name>\ReceiveStorage\ by default; each of
which was given an ADS ZoneID with reading 'ZoneID = 3'. Meanwhile, copies of the transferred
files were located in %AppData%\Local\Packages\Microsoft.SkypeApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c\LocalState
\<Skype name>\SendingStorage\. The files retained the original filenames and extensions. In
addition to the file download or transfer directory paths, we were able to recover copies of
thumbnail images for the transferred or downloaded files within the Windows thumbcache.
An inspection of the registry entries observed that each transferred or downloaded file cre-
ated a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) key in HKEY_USERS\<SID>\Software\Classes
\LocalSettings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppModel\SystemAppData
\Microsoft.SkypeApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c\PersistedStorageItemTable\ManagedByApp\. The entries

Fig 18. Portion of config.xml file.

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 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Fig 19. An excerpt of the.APPCONTENT-MS file recovered in our research.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.g019

of particular interest with the key are ‘FilePath’ and ‘LastUpdatedTime’, which hold the direc-
tory path and last modified time for the file. When the sample files were opened, references
were found for the directory paths and last accessed times in the ‘RecentDocs’ registry key and
‘DLLHOST.EXE.pf’ prefetch file.
An inspection of the main.db database located further details regarding the file transfer or
download in the ‘Transfers’ table. The details included the senders’ names, transfer types
(where 1 indicates receiving and 2 indicates transferring), reasons for transfer failure (if any),
storage paths, the times when the transfers were accepted, started and finished, as well as other
file transfer information as shown in Fig 20. Records specific to the conversation or file transfer
threads were located in the ‘Messages’ table, which encompassed the senders’ Skype names
(authors), whether the correspondents were the user’s permanent contacts, the times when the
threads were sent in Unix epoch format, the message sending status and types (as indicated in
Table 6), reasons for message sending failure (if any), and other information as shown in Fig
21. The group chat could be discerned from the ‘participant_count’ table column given the
value higher than 2. Moreover, it was also possible to recover the conversation texts and

Fig 20. The ‘Transfers’ table of main.db database.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.g020

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 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Table 6. Details of the ‘Messages’ table [66].

Table field Value Description

Type 4 Conference
30/39 Video session started/ended
50/51 Contact ask/permission
53 Blocked
60 Sent emoticon
61 Sent text message
63 Sent contact details
64 Sent SMS
67 Sent voice message
68 Sent file
110 Date of birth
chatmsg_type 3 Text message
5 Group chat
7 Data transfer
18 Added contact
chatmsg_status 2 Text message sent
4 Text message downloaded
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.t006

metadata associated with the downloaded or transferred files in the ‘body_xml’ table column
(of the ‘Messages’ table). As can be seen in Fig 22, each downloaded or transferred file forms an
opening and closing XML subtag (in the 'files' tag) to record its file size, transfer index, transfer
ID, and filename in the ‘body_xml’ table column.
Another file of forensic interest that will potentially allow a practitioner to recover the con-
versation history is the ‘Chatsync’ file located in %AppData%\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Sky-
peApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c\LocalState\<Skype name>\Chatsync\. The ‘Chatsync’ file is stored in
the format of <Random sixteen character strings>.DAT and is mainly used to facilitate chat
log synchronisation between devices [67]. The ‘Chatsync’ file is chat-session-specific in the
sense that a chatsync file is generally created for each chat session. Fig 23 illustrates that the
'Chatsync' files may provide the conversation texts and timestamp information for the chat ses-
sions associated with the Skype user.

Fig 21. The ‘Messages’ table of main.db database.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.g021

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 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Fig 22. File transfer metadata recovered from the ‘body_xml’ table column of the ‘Messages’ table.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.g022

Unsurprisingly, a manual search for terms unique to the Enron sample files (i.e., ‘pensive’
and ‘parakeet’) as well as table column names of the main.db database produced matches to the
plain text copies of the transferred/downloaded files and main.db database in the unstructured
datasets, respectively. However, there was no common footer information that could enable
future carving of the main.db database. We also located fragments of the payloads for the con-
versation threads in the memory dump, which held the conversation times, senders and receiv-
ers’ Skype names, and conversation texts as highlighted in Fig 24. When file transfers occurred,
additional entries were observed for the filenames, file sizes, and file transfer IDs in the payload.
The header fields could be suitable search terms for the remnants; a Yarascan search would
attribute the remnants to the Skype’s process.
Examination of the network traffic observed that the host established a direct UDP connec-
tion with the correspondents during conversations and file transfers, and hence the IP
addresses could be detected. However, there was no definitive port number or URL which
could enable future identification of the traffic. Further analysis of the network packets deter-
mined that the data were fully encrypted, but we were able to estimate when the conversations
were taken place from the corresponding timestamp information.

5.5 Voice and Video Calls

Skype allows users to perform voice calls via the free Skype to Skype calls and in the premium
version, users could make Skype to mobile or landline calls using Skype credit. In order to
enhance the user’s interactive experience, Skype allows users to share free video calls with any-
one who has Skype and a webcam or compatible smartphone.

Fig 23. Portion of the output from Skype Chatsync Reader.

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 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Fig 24. Remnants of Skype's payload header recovered from RAM.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.g024

Examinations of the directory listings determined that the Skype app does not save the
voice and video calls. However, we were able to recover a wealth of caches relating to the voice
and video calls in the main.db database. Recalling the ‘Messages’ table, it was observed that
entries of the voice or video calls could be differentiated from the ‘type’ table column given the
value 30, 39, or 67 (see Table 6). Details of the voice or video calls were recovered from the
'Calls' table, which comprised the callers' Skype names, the times when the calls were started,
the call durations in seconds, and whether the calls were incoming calls, conference calls, and
put on hold—see Fig 25. Additionally, the ‘CallMembers’ table provided additional informa-
tion associated with the contacts with whom the user had voice or video calls such as the Skype
names, full names, call charges, reasons for call failures (if any), graphical user IDs (represented
in ‘<User's Skype name>-<Correspondent's Skype name>-<Call name>‘), external IP
addresses of the correspondents, call statuses, the times when the calls were started, the call
durations, whether the calls were incoming or outgoing, conference calls, and from permanent
contacts.
Examinations of the network traffic of the voice and video calls observed that the app estab-
lished a session with the CloudFlare (GlobalSign) server for Online Certificate Status Protocol
(OSCP) stapling and with the Verisign server for certificate authentication. When the calls
occurred, the IP addresses were allocated to the supernodes (on random TCP ports) and then
to the Windows Live server (i.e., IP address 65.55.246.85) on port 443, which we theorised for
user lookups and authentications. The network traffic was subsequently seen with random IP
addresses and UDP ports, which were hypothesised from supernodes responsible for bridging
the VoIP, but the contents were encrypted completely.

Fig 25. An excerpt of the ‘Calls’ table of main.db database.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.g025

PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300 March 16, 2016 21 / 29

 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Fig 26. Video message metadata recovered from the ‘body_xml’ table column of the ‘Messages’ table.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.g026

5.6 Video Messages

Skype allows the users to share video messages (video recordings) with other online and offline
users. The video messages are sent as a link in Skype version 6.5 or older, which requires a
secret code access.
Sending a video message, it was observed that the Skype app stored a copy of the video mes-
sage in %AppData%\Local\Packages\Microsoft.SkypeApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c\LocalState\<Skype
name>\media\ of the sender's device by default. The video message also created a thumbnail
image in %AppData%\Local\Packages\Microsoft.SkypeApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c\LocalState\<Skype
name>\thumbnails\.
Analysis of the main.db database revealed that the Skype app cached notifications of the
video messages in the ‘body_xml’ table column of the 'Messages' table, and the entry of which
could be discerned from the XML tag 'videomessage'. The notification records provided the
video message IDs, public links, and secret codes (sent from Skype application version 6.5 or
older) for the video messages sent or received by the user as highlighted in Fig 26. Meanwhile,
details of the video messages sent/received could be located in the ‘VideoMessages’ table,
which included the directory paths, public links, titles, descriptions (if any), author names, cre-
ation times, transferring or receiving times as illustrated in Fig 27.

5.7 Uninstallation of the Skype App

Uninstallation of the Skype app did not remove the installation folders like as was presented
for the Facebook app. However, the application folder was removed from the file system
completely. Analysis of the unallocated space, RAM, as well as a variety Windows system files
(i.e., $LogFile, $MFT, $UsnJrnl, pagefile.sys, shortcuts, event logs, prefetch files, and thumb-
cache files) resulted in the recovery of artefacts created prior to uninstallation of the app, with
additional references to the directory paths and timestamp information for the files removed
during the uninstallation in $LogFile, $MFT, $UsnJrnl.

6. Discussion
In this research, we identified artefacts common to investigating the Windows Store apps for
IM. Previous studies only addressed dead analysis of the IM apps, while we focus on both the
volatile and non-volatile artefacts. Our experiments showed that the Facebook and Skype apps
maintain a wealth of caches of forensic interest within the ‘localstate’ application folder in
Sqlite database unencrypted, which seem to agree with the findings of Lee and Chung [34].
This indicated that when a user has used a Windows Store app for IM, there will be records
remaining in the application folder to support reconstruction of the logins, contact lists, con-
versations, file transfers, and other relevant IM activities, assuming that the app is not
removed.

Fig 27. An excerpt of the ‘VideoMessages’ table of main.db database.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.g027

PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300 March 16, 2016 22 / 29

 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Although several registry keys new to the Windows Store apps could be recovered, it was
determined that the Windows Store apps record significantly less information of interest to IM
forensics in comparison to traditional client desktop application. While artefacts of the user
profiles, contact lists and recent communications could be potentially recovered from the regis-
try of the older Windows IM client applications [16, 21, 36–38, 42, 43], only installation meta-
data (i.e., install paths and times) could be recovered for the Windows Store apps, albeit
records of the transferred files could be recovered in some cases. This is likely resulted from the
adoption of the app caches. Similar to any other Windows client applications, our examina-
tions of the system files such as $LogFile, $MFT, $UsnJrnl, shortcuts, event logs, thumbnail
cache, as well as the ‘recentdocs’ registry key revealed that additional timestamp information
could be recovered to support evidence found in all scenarios, but results may not be definitive.
It should be noted, however, that that the significance, amount, and location of artefacts
could vary in accordance to the Windows Store apps under investigation. For instance, in our
research, it was determined that:
• both the Facebook and Skype apps maintain a different directory structure in the application
folders;
• the apps hold different database schema for the application caches;
• caches of the Facebook app appear only when the user is logged in from the app, while caches
of the Skype app remain resident throughout the lifetime of the app;
• the Skype app caches copies of the transferred and downloaded files in the application folder
but this is not the case with the Facebook app;
• only the Skype app holds records of the transferred or downloaded files in HKEY_USERS
\<SID>\Software\Classes\LocalSettings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App-
Model\SystemAppData\<Package ID>\PersistedStorageItemTable\ManagedByApp\.
The findings suggested that while a method can be generally defined to guide the investiga-
tion of the Windows Store apps, a different process may be necessary for investigating the dif-
ferent IM apps.
Our examinations of the physical memory captures indicated that the memory dumps can
provide a potential alternative method for recovery of the application caches in plain text, with
the exception of the login password. The fact that there was no clear text password in the hard
drives and memory dumps should perhaps be unsurprising since the credential information is
securely encrypted in the Credential Locker [29]. Nevertheless, a practitioner must keep in
mind that memory changes frequently according to users’ activities and will be wiped as soon
as the system is shut down.
In some cases, remnants of the caches could be located in the swap file (pagefile.sys) and
unallocated space. The most likely explanation for the remnants is that the system swapped
inactive memory pages containing the application caches out of the memory to the hard disk
during the system’s normal operation. As the remnants were recovered with minimal space
configuration in our research, we believe there will be a greater chance of remnants on a typi-
cally larger system. Although the network traffic was encrypted, sufficient IP address and URL
references could be located for scoping the user activities as well as requesting for assistance
from counterparts overseas (i.e., via Interpol). Hence, we recommend that the physical mem-
ory and network captures should be undertaken wherever practical. Table 7 summarises the
key artefacts located as part of our research.

PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300 March 16, 2016 23 / 29

 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Table 7. Summary of findings.

Source of Facebook app Skype app

evidence
Registry branches HKEY_USERS\<SID>\Software\Classes\Local Settings HKEY_USERS \<SID>\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software
of forensic \Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppModel \Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppModel\Repository\Families
interest. \Repository\Families\Faceook.Facebook_8xx8rvfyw5nnt \Microsoft.SkypeApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c\Microsoft.
\Facebook.Facebook_1.4.0.9_x64_8xx8rvfyw5nnt SkypeApp_2.0.0.5011_x86__kzf8qxf38zg5c
Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer HKEY_USERS\<SID>\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software
\RecentDocs \Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppModel\SystemAppData
\Microsoft.SkypeApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c\PersistedStorageItemTable
\ManagedByApp\<GUID>
Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RecentDocs
Directory paths/ %AppData%\Local\Temp\winstore.log %AppData%\Local\Temp\winstore.log
files of forensic
interest
%AppData%\Local\Packages\winstore_cw5n1h2txyewy\AC %AppData%\Local\Packages\winstore_cw5n1h2txyewy\AC\Temp
\Temp\winstore.log \winstore.log
Analytics.sqlite, FriendRequest.sqlite, Friends. User-specific %AppData%\Local\Packages\Microsoft.
sqlite, Messages.sqlite, Notifications.sqlite, and Stories. SkypeApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c\LocalState\<Skype name>\main.db
sqlite databases stored in %AppData%\Local\Packages
\Facebook.Facebook_8xx8rvfyw5nnt\LocalState\<User-
specific Facebook ID>\DB\
Caches of the downloaded files stored in %AppData%\Local %AppData%\Local\Packages\Microsoft.SkypeApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c
\Packages\Package ID\AC\INetCache\Cache ID\ \LocalState\shared.xml
%AppData%\Local\Packages\Microsoft.SkypeApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c
\LocalState\<Skype name>\Chatsync\
%AppData%\Local\Packages\Microsoft.SkypeApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c
\LocalState\avatars\
%Downloads%\Microsoft.SkypeApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c!App\
%AppData%\Local\Packages\Microsoft.SkypeApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c
\LocalState\<Skype name>\ReceiveStorage\
%AppData%\Local\Packages\Microsoft.SkypeApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c
\LocalState\<Skype name>\SendingStorage\
APPCONTENT-MS files located in %Appdata%\Local\Packages
\microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps_8wekyb3d8bbwe
\LocalState\Indexed\LiveComm\6e4f9dff0b76dd9b\120712–0049
\People\AddressBook\ and %Appdata%\Local\Packages\microsoft.
windowscommunicationsapps_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState
\Indexed\LiveComm\6e4f9dff0b76dd9b\120712–0049\People\Me\
Prefetch files FACEBOOK.EXE.pf WWAHOST.EXE.pf
DLLHOST.EXE.pf
Link files Located link files for the transferred or downloaded files in % Located link files for the login page as well as the transferred or
\AppData\Roaming \Microsoft\Windows\Recent\ downloaded files in %\AppData\Roaming \Microsoft\Windows
\Recent\
Thumbcache files Thumbnail images for the transferred or downloaded files Thumbnail images for the transferred or downloaded files
Profile pictures of the user and the contacts Avatars of the user and the contacts
Swap files and Copies of the files of forensic interest as well as transferred Copies of the files of forensic interest as well as transferred or
physical memory or downloaded files unencrypted downloaded files in plain text
dumps
Filename and path references for the files of forensic Filename and path references for the files of forensic interest and
interest and transferred or downloaded files transferred or downloaded files
The process name could be discerned from ‘Facebook.exe’ Payload headers for the IM and file transfer threads
The process name could be discerned from ‘WWAHost.exe’
Unallocated space Copies of the files of forensic interest as well as transferred Copies of the files of forensic interest as well as transferred or
or downloaded file in plain text downloaded file in plain text
(Continued)

PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300 March 16, 2016 24 / 29

 Windows Instant Messaging App Forensics

Table 7. (Continued)

Source of Facebook app Skype app

evidence
Filename and path references for the files of forensic Filename and path references for the files of forensic interest and
interest and transferred or downloaded files transferred or downloaded files
Network traffic Host and servers’ IP addresses Host and servers’ IP addresses
Associated timestamps Host and correspondents’ IP addresses
Web documents and image files from the HTTP sites. Associated timestamps
Web documents and image files from the HTTP sites.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150300.t007

7. Conclusion and Future Work

Instant messaging (IM), such as VoIP apps, are increasingly popular among individuals and
business organisations [68], including criminals. To ensure the most effective collection of evi-
dence of relevance, it is important that a practitioner possess an up-to-date understanding of
different technologies [69–77]. This paper presented the findings from our forensic examina-
tion (acquisition and reconstruction of the terrestrial artefacts left by the use) of two popular
Windows Store IM apps, namely Facebook and Skype. The study consisted of installation,
uninstallation, logins, conversations, transferred files, and and other IM activities specific to
the apps investigated.
The results indicated that use of the Windows Store apps IM apps can leave behind incrimi-
nating evidential material useful or critical to an investigation on the hard drive, memory
dumps, and network captures. The artefacts located as part of our experiments are likely to be
common with other Windows Store IM apps as well as newer Windows OS (i.e., Windows 10),
since the apps share a common feature set. While the implementation may vary between differ-
ent IM apps, we contended that practitioners could use the artefacts identified in this research
as a basis for their investigation of the client as a potential evidence source.
Future work would include:
1. Extending this study to new (version of) apps, including apps popular in other countries
(i.e., WeChat and LINE), to have an up-to-date forensic understanding of these technologies
that can be used to inform investigations.
2. Proposing a method for analyzing new (as of yet) unknown apps with similar functionality
(ies). If such a method can be developed, evaluation might demonstrate that it can it be
applied to a new app, or even implemented into a tool.

Author Contributions
Conceived and designed the experiments: TYY AD KKRC. Performed the experiments: TYY.
Analyzed the data: TYY. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: TYY AD KKRC. Wrote
the paper: TYY AD KKRC ZM.

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