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Jumplist

Windows DFIR notes are no longer maintained on InfoSec-Notes. Updated versions can be found on: artefacts.help.

Overview

Location:

  • AutomaticDestinations:

    %SystemDrive%:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations\<APP_ID>.automaticDestinations-ms

    Filename example: 590aee7bdd69b59b.automaticDestinations-ms

  • CustomDestinations:

    %SystemDrive%:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\CustomDestinations\<APP_ID>.customDestinations-ms

    Filename example: fb3b0dbfee58fac8.customDestinations-ms

Yield information related to files and folders access.

Introduced in Windows 7, Jumplists are linked to a taskbar user experience-enhancing feature that allows users to "jump" to files, folders or others elements by right clicking on open applications in the Windows taskbar. The Windows Explorer's Quick Access feature also stores entries in Jumplists.

Two forms of Jumplists are created:

  • automatic entries for recently accessed items, stored in *.automaticDestinations-ms files.

  • custom entries in *.customDestinations-ms files for items manually "pinned" elements (by users or the applications themselves) to the Windows taskbar or an application's Jumplist.

Each application AutomaticDestinations and CustomDestinations JumpLists information are thus stored in two unique and separated files, of different format:

  • AutomaticDestinations JumpLists files are stored as AUTOMATICDESTINATIONS-MS file, in the MS OLE Structured Storage format. This file format contains multiple streams, each stream composed of data similar to shortcut files (.LNK).

  • CustomDestinations JumpLists are stored as CUSTOMDESTINATIONS-MS file, also assimilable to a series of shortcut files.

Information of interest

JumpLists hold information similar in nature to shortcut files for each file referenced in an application's AutomaticDestinations / CustomDestinations JumpLists:

  • the target file's absolute path, size and attributes (hidden, read-only, etc.).

  • the target file Modified, Access, and Created (MAC) timestamps, updated whenever the file is "jumped" to.

  • the number of times the target file was "jumped" to.

As JumpLists are linked to an application, through an AppId, knowledge of the application that was used to open the files can be deducted if the application associated to the AppId is known. A number of AppId is documented in EricZimmerman 's JumpList GitHub repository.

Specific applications may define custom JumpLists entries that store information of forensic interest. For example, the Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge web browsers store the recently closed tabs in their respective CustomDestinations JumpLists.

Parsing

Eric Zimmerman's JumpListExplorer.exe and JLECmd.exe tools (KAPE's JLECmd module) can be used to process JumpLists files.

# Parses the specified JumpLists file.
JLECmd.exe [-q --csv <CSV_DIRECTORY_OUTPUT>] -f <JUMPLIST_FILE>

# Recursively retrieves and parses the JumpLists files in the specified directory.
JLECmd.exe [-q --csv <CSV_DIRECTORY_OUTPUT>] -d <C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\ | C:\ | DIRECTORY>

References

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu4-nREmzGM

https://forensicswiki.xyz/page/LNK

https://www.magnetforensics.com/blog/forensic-analysis-of-lnk-files/#:~:text=LNK%20files%20are%20a%20relatively,LNK%20extension

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