![]() ![]() One of my favorite places to live is the “ unknown unknown” space. Examples Finding Unknown, But Interesting, Apps However, SQLite Miner is one tool that could be very beneficial for the forensic examiner to inform that manual analysis of a new application, find relevant data within a SQLite database of interest, or search across a larger set of backup folders to automatically export all embedded files for easier searching. It is aimed at identifying files within databases and hard codes those magic numbers to find, not where to look for them. SQLite is also not aimed at any one application and doesn’t hard code any knowledge of popular databases. It will not programmatically tell you how tables join together or produce a report about the app you are investigating. SQLite Miner is not an automated analysis of the entire SQLite file. Check out the README for more information. While SQLite Miner comes with a number of file formats baked in, the file formats themselves are editable in the included Fun Stuff© config file to add any specific file types that are relevant to your investigations or simply to improve SQLite Miner for others. All of those blobs are then checked for specific magic numbers that identify various file formats. It does this by checking the schema for all the tables and then querying each of those to identify which columns contain blobs. ![]() SQLite Miner doesn’t assume it knows where anything is stored, it talks directly to the source SQLite file and asks nicely for those hidden gems. I wrote this while working on the iCloud Notes problem, wanting to find some more data that I was sure was in the database file somewhere and really not wanting to click on everything to find where, I wanted the database to tell me itself. The name stems from the fact that I want it to find hidden gems for me that I may miss by looking at the file blindly. I was unaware of any tools that dive into the database and report what it finds back to the forensic examiner so I wrote one called SQLite Miner. A Better Solution: SQLite MinerĪs always, automation is a better answer than running dozens of SQL queries yourself. This may lead to a forensics examiner trusting their tools or just accepting the existing push-button approach, to the detriment of their investigation. Another problem is the sheer number of queries that need to be run to chew through a good number of the file types that could have data stored in the SQLite database.Īll of these approaches get exhausting, even if you limit your searches to known test file types you put into the application. One problem with this approach is that those queries require the forensics examiner to understand the structure of the database (i.e. Then the examiner can eyeball the data and run some specific queries to try to identify these files in the context of their columns. Nor will you want to do this for a file of any significant size.Īnother solution could be to export the SQLite file out and open it in some CLI or graphical browser. While this would allow for rudimentary searches for known magic numbers, it wouldn’t put those entries in the context of their columns to know how to interpret the information. ![]() The downside to this is if the tool does not fully support that database, you may not even know if there is missing information, or if that missing information is garbage, encrypted, or what.Īnother possible solution if the tool you prefer is not parsing the database would be to export the SQLite file and use hexdump to simply eyeball the entire file. ![]() Possible Solutionsįor well known applications, relying on your forensic tool of choice may be the right way to go. To effectively consider everything that may be in the database of an unknown application, the forensics examiner needs to identify all of these common file formats and do something to make the information readable. Alternately, the file format itself may not be obvious to everyone, such as a JPEG picture without EXIF which starts with the obscure 0xFF 0xD8 0xFF 0xD8. For example, a column may contain compressed data that obscures the plaintext from the forensic examiner’s view, such as Apple iCloud Notes using GZIP for the Note data. Mobile applications can store whatever they want in databases in formats that may or may not be obvious to the naked eye. You can use either the latest stable release or deal directly with the master repository. TL DR: Data hidden in SQLite may not be human-readable and SQLite Miner will help you find the hidden gems inside those databases. ![]()
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