Introduction

This release of HstEx® adds the ability to recover a number of new artefacts as well as adding support for two new browsers. We have also made a number of changes to support the modifications introduced by all of the main stream browsers.

New Features

HstEx® v4.6 now supports the following:

Microsoft Internet Explorer/Edge

Microsoft Internet Explorer and Edge browsers keep track of the visits for each tab; these visits are stored in what is known as a Travel Log. The Travel Log allows the user to navigate backwards and forwards through the log of visits. This information is saved into a Tab Session file. HstEx® can recovery individual Travel Log entries for Internet Explorer v8 to 11 and Microsoft Edge v20 to 38. HstEx® can also search for, and recover, Recovery Store, Tab Session and Roaming Tab Session data (including page thumbnails and previews).

Recovery of Data Relating to InPrivate Browsing

When Recovery Store, Tab Session and Roaming Tab Session files are targetted for recovery and the resulting data was from an InPrivate browsing session, NetAnalysis® has the ability to identify and flag such sessions.

Recovery of Google Chrome/Chromium Based Simple Cache for HTTP

This disk cache is used by default in Google Chrome on Mac OS X and Linux and also Android mobile devices.  It can also be enabled on Chrome and most Chromium based browsers running on Windows desktop. It was initially designed as a simple back-end to deal with the IO bottlenecks which impaired mobile browsing performance on some platforms. HstEx® can now recover Simple Cache entries.

New Browser Support

We have added support for the following browsers:

Opera Neon

Opera Neon is a new concept browser: "a vision of what browsers could become". It was first released in January 2017 and is available for Mac and Windows.  The browser is Chromium based but with some additional unique features.  Opera Neon gives the user new ways to interact with web content, including the ability to drag, push and pop the tab icons.

HstEx® can recover the following:

  • History Entries
  • Download Entries
  • Cookie Entries
  • Cache Entries
  • Simple Cache Entries
  • Keyword Search Terms
  • Form History
  • Login Data

Brave

Brave is another new, open-source, multi-platform web browser developed by Brave Software; it is based on the Chromium web browser and its Blink engine. It claims to block website trackers and remove intrusive Internet advertisements. The browser also claims to improve online privacy by sharing less data with advertising customers.  

HstEx® can recover the following:

  • History Entries
  • Download Entries
  • Cookie Entries
  • Cache Entries
  • Simple Cache Entries
  • Keyword Search Terms
  • Form History
  • Login Data