Windows 8.X facebook and twitter metro app artifacts

Abstract

The release of Windows 8.x for personal computers has increased user appetite for metro apps. Many social media metro apps are available in the Windows Store, the installation of which integrates social media platforms directly into the operating system. Metro applications enable social media platforms to be accessed without an Internet browser. The increased demand for metro apps has turned out to be a gold mine in digital forensic investigations. This is because, whenever an app is executed within an operating system, evidentiary traces of activities are left behind. Hence, it is important to locate and analyze evidentiary traces in Windows 8.x personal computer environments. This chapter focuses on the forensic analysis of two widely-used personal computer based, social media metro apps – Facebook and Twitter. Experiments were performed to determine if the activities piloted via these metro apps could be identified and reconstructed. The results reveal that, in the case of Facebook and Twitter metro apps, potential evidence and valuable data exist and can be located and analyzed by digital forensic investigators.