Determining file knowledge
Some incidents you investigate may deal with contraband images, stolen data, or unlawful access to data. You will have to determine whether the user had knowledge of the file(s) in question, or whether the file(s) existed on the user’s system.
We will now talk about some artifacts you can find in the Windows operating system that will help you make that determination.
Exploring the thumbcache
A thumbcache is a database of thumbnail images created when using Windows Explorer in a thumbnail view. Depending on the size of the thumbnail, you may have multiple databases with the same image but with different sizes. It depends on the view the user selected while in Windows Explorer. The existence of an image found in the database is not substantial proof that the user knew the image was on the system. The system can add a thumbnail to the cache without the user’s knowledge. The thumbcache can be found in the user’s profile at the...
