Looking at the NTUSER.DAT, Amcache, and SYSTEM hives
When investigating a Windows system for potential cyber-attacks, one of the most important pieces of information that a forensic examiner can gather is evidence of execution. As mentioned earlier, evidence of execution refers to artifacts left behind by programs that have been run on a system and can provide valuable insights into the activities that occurred on the system. Understanding how to analyze and interpret these artifacts is essential to conducting effective Windows forensics investigations.
Evidence of execution can take many different forms, including file metadata, registry entries, and log files.
The NTUSER.DAT file is another important artifact to consider when analyzing evidence of execution. The NTUSER.DAT file is a registry hive that contains configuration settings for the user account currently logged on to a Windows system. It contains information about the programs that have been run on the system, including...
