Reading the registry
Recipe Difficulty: Medium
Python Version: 2.7
Operating System: Linux
The Windows registry contains many important details related to the operating system configuration, user activity, software installation and usage, and so much more. These files are often heavily scrutinized and researched due to the number of artifacts they contain and their relevance to Windows systems. Parsing registry files gives us access to the keys and values that can reveal basic operating system information, access to folders and files, application usage, USB devices, and more. In this recipe, we focus on accessing common baseline information from the SYSTEM
and SOFTWARE
hives.
Getting started
This recipe requires the installation of three third-party modules to function: pytsk3
, pyewf
, and Registry
. Refer to Chapter 8, Working with Forensic Evidence ContainerRecipes, for a detailed explanation of installing the pytsk3
and pyewf
modules. All other libraries used in this script are present in Python...