Creating a timeline is a standard part of many forensics investigations. Unfortunately, creating a timleine with many standard tools, such as Autopsy, can be tedious and consume several hours. When the timeline is finally done, the options to present it are limited by these tools. In this talk, attendees will learn how to create timelines for Windows systems based on information found in NTFS filesystems in minutes using Python scripts to be presented. Information is stored in a MySQL database which makes creating timelines very fast and infinitely flexible. A few Bash shell scripts for doing common queries will also be presented. A basic understanding of Python and MySQL would be helpful, but not required. Attendees need not be experts on NTFS as the basics behind getting timeline information from NTFS will be discussed.

Philip Polstra (aka Dr. Phil) has been causing trouble with computers and electronics from an early age. He is currently an Associate Professor of Digital Forensics at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. When not teaching, he is known to build electronics, speak at conferences around the world on various forensic and infosec topics, fly, teach others to fly, build airplanes, and perform penetration tests. He is the author of a number of books (including the first book ever published by Pentester Academy on Linux Forensics and the recently release Windows Forensics) and video courses for Pentester Academy and others.

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