Difference between revisions of "Mozilla Firefox 3 History File Format"

Revision as of 09:49, 16 April 2008 (view source) Kevin (Talk | contribs) (→‎moz_historyvisits) ← Older edit		Revision as of 10:05, 16 April 2008 (view source) Kevin (Talk | contribs) (→‎moz_historyvisits: Figured out what was up with dates in the History file.) Newer edit →
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	session INTEGER</pre>		session INTEGER</pre>
	The place_id column of the moz_historyvisits table corresponds to the id column of the moz_places table.		The place_id column of the moz_historyvisits table corresponds to the id column of the moz_places table.
−	The visit_date column keeps time in Unix time format (number of seconds since January 1, 1970).  However, there are additional digits appended to the end of the number.  Therefore, only the first 11 digits of the number should be used to calculate the actual visit date.	+
		+	The visit_date column keeps time in [http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/PRTime PRTime] format, a 64-bit integer representing the number of microseconds since midnight (00:00:00) 1 January 1970 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).  This level of precision may be more than what is required for a forensic application, but the PRTime format can easily be converted into CTime format by truncating everything after the 11th digit.
	The visit_type column is an integer that represents one of seven types.		The visit_type column is an integer that represents one of seven types.

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Revision as of 10:05, 16 April 2008

Starting in Firefox 3, a new file format was used to record browser history information. Rather than storing this information in a flat file using the mork file format (as was done in previous versions of Firefox), the information is kept in sqlite tables within a file.

Contents 1 File Locations 2 File Header 3 Database Tables 4 moz_places 5 moz_historyvisits 6 Gathering browser history

File Locations

On linux systems, the history file is located in the users home folder in the .mozilla/firefox/<profile folder>/ folder and is named places.sqlite. On Windows systems, the history file is located in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Mozilla\firefox\Profiles\<profile folder> and is named places.sqlite.

File Header

Firefox 3 history files start with

 53 51 4C 69 74 65 20 66 6F 72 6D 61 74 20 33

which represents the ascii string SQLite format 3. This is normal for any Sqlite database file, so it may be more appropriate to verify that the file is a Firefox 3 history file by looking for the database tables within the file. For example, at offset 120701 (0x1D77D) the hex value

43 52 45 41 54 45 20 54 41 42 4C 45 20 6D 6F 7A 5F 62 6F 6F 6B 6D 61 72 6B 73

can be found. This represents the ascii string CREATE TABLE moz_bookmarks. At offset 120973 (0x1D88D) the hex value

43 52 45 41 54 45 20 49 4E 44 45 58 20 6D 6F 7A 5F 62 6F 6F 6B 6D 61 72 6B 73 5F 69 74 65 6D 69 6E 64 65 78

can be found. This represents the ascii string CREATE TABLE moz_bookmarks_itemindex.

Database Tables

The places.sqlite file is essentially a database with multiple tables:

  moz_bookmarks
  moz_bookmarks_itemindex
  moz_bookmarks_parentindex
  moz_bookmarks_roots
  moz_keywords
  moz_favicons (actually stored the favicons in a BLOB within the table)
  moz_annos
  moz_annos_placeattributeindex
  moz_attributes
  moz_items_annos
  moz_items_annos_itemattributeindex
  moz_places (See Below)
  moz_places_url_uniqueindex
  moz_places_faviconindex
  moz_places_hostindex
  moz_places_visitcount
  moz_places_frequencyindex
  moz_historyvists (See Below)
  moz_historyvists_placedateindex
  moz_historyvists_fromindex
  moz_historyvists_dateindex
  moz_inputhistory
  sqlite_autoindex_moz_bookmarks_roots_1
  sqlite_autoindex_moz_keywords_1
  sqlite_sequence
  sqlite_autoindex_moz_favicons_1
  sqlite_autoindex_moz_anno_attributes_1
  sqlite_autoindex_moz_inputhistory_1

moz_places

The moz_places table holds some of the information necessary to reconstruct the browser history. Note that some of these fields are different than in the graphic above. The fields reported here are what was actually found in a Firefox 3 History File. It is possible that the graphic was developed before development of the history file reached maturity and is somewhat outdated.

  id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY
  url LONGVARCHAR (The whole URL string)
  title LONGVARCHAR (The title presented from the TITLE tags on the page)
  rev_host LONGVARCHAR (this is the host name from the URL in reverse)
  visit_count INTEGER
  hidden INTEGER
  typed INTEGER
  favicon_id INTEGER
  frequency INTEGER

moz_historyvisits

The moz_historyvisits table holds the other information that you need to link up with moz_places to reconstruct the browser history. Note that some of these fields are different than in the graphic above. The fields reported here are what was actually found in a Firefox 3 History File. It is possible that the graphic was developed before development of the history file reached maturity and is somewhat outdated.

  id INTEGER
  from_visit INTEGER
  place_id INTEGER
  visit_date INTEGER 
  visit_type INTEGER
  session INTEGER

The place_id column of the moz_historyvisits table corresponds to the id column of the moz_places table.

The visit_date column keeps time in PRTime format, a 64-bit integer representing the number of microseconds since midnight (00:00:00) 1 January 1970 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). This level of precision may be more than what is required for a forensic application, but the PRTime format can easily be converted into CTime format by truncating everything after the 11th digit.

The visit_type column is an integer that represents one of seven types.

1	TRANSITION_LINK	This transition type means the user followed a link and got a new toplevel window.
2	TRANSITION_TYPED	This transition type means that the user typed the page's URL in the URL bar or selected it from URL bar autocomplete results, clicked on it from a history query (from the History sidebar, History menu, or history query in the personal toolbar or Places organizer.
3	TRANSITION_BOOKMARK	This transition is set when the user followed a bookmark to get to the page.
4	TRANSITION_EMBED	This transition type is set when some inner content is loaded. This is true of all images on a page, and the contents of the iframe. It is also true of any content in a frame, regardless of whether or not the user clicked something to get there.
5	TRANSITION_REDIRECT_PERMANENT	Set when the transition was a permanent redirect.
6	TRANSITION_REDIRECT_TEMPORARY	Set when the transition was a temporary redirect.
7	TRANSITION_DOWNLOAD	Set when the transition is a download.

Gathering browser history

Browser history for Firefox 3 can be gathered by connecting to the Sqlite database and performing simple queries. For example, the URLs visited and the date and time of the visit can be gathered with this query:

SELECT moz_places.url, moz_historyvisits.visit_date 
FROM moz_places, moz_historyvisits 
WHERE moz_places.id = moz_historyvisits.place_id