Jump Lists
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Jump Lists are a feature found in Windows 7.
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Jump Lists
Jump Lists are a new Windows 7 Taskbar feature that gives the user quick access to recently accessed application files and actions.
Jump Lists come in multiple flavors:
- automatic (autodest, or *.automaticDestinations-ms) files
- custom (custdest, or *.customDestinations-ms) files
Autodest files are created by the operating system.
The Jump Lists are located in the user profile path:
C:\Users\%USERNAME%\Recent folder
Where the autodest Jump Lists are located in the automaticDestinations subdirectory, and custdest Jump Lists in the customDestinations subdirectory.
Note: Jump Lists can prove to be considerably valuable during an examination, as the files appear (in limited testing) to persist after the application itself is removed from the system. In one test, iTunes 10 was installed on a 64-bit Windows 7 system, and two audio files (i.e., CyberSpeak podcasts) were launched via iTunes. The Jump Lists persisted after the iTunes was removed from the system.
AutomaticDestinations
Path: C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations
Files: *.automaticDestinations-ms
Structure
The autodest files are OLE Compound Files containing multiple streams of which:
- hexadecimal numbered, e.g. "1a"
- DestList
Each of the hexadecimal numbered streams contains data similar of that of a Windows Shortcut.
The "DestList" stream acts as a most recently/frequently used (MRU/MFU) list. This stream consists of a 32-byte header, followed by the various structures that correspond to each of the individual numbered streams. Each of these structures is 114 bytes in size, followed by a variable length Unicode string. The first 114 bytes of the structure contains the following information at the corresponding offsets:
| Offset | Size | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 0x48 | 16 bytes | NetBIOS name of the system; padded with zeros to 16 bytes |
| 0x58 | 8 bytes | Stream number; corresponds to the numbered stream within the jump list |
| 0x64 | 8 bytes | FILETIME object |
| 0x70 | 2 bytes | Number of Unicode characters in the string that follows |
CustomDestinations
Path: C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\CustomDestinations
Files: *.customDestinations-ms
Structure
Custdest files reportedly follow a structure of sequential MS-SHLLINK binary format segments.
See also
External Links
Tools
- Autodest files can be opened in tools such as the MiTec Structured Storage Viewer, and each of the streams individually/manually extracted. Each of the extracted numbered streams can then be viewed via the Windows File Analyzer.
- Another approach would be to use Mark Woan's JumpLister tool to view the information within the numbered streams of each autodest file.
- TZWorks LLC Jump List Parser (jmp) also has a tool that can parse both the custom and automatic Destinations type files. For automaticDestinations it associates the MRU/MFU metadata with that of the SHLLINK metadata. There are versions of the tool that can run in Windows, Linux or Mac OS-X.
