John Lukach
iCloud Control Panel for Windows v1.01
Apple is commonly known for artifacts left on the iPhone, iPad, iPod, and Mac but can also be found on Windows if the iCloud service was enabled. The goal of this post is to provide the application level artifacts that could potentially determine who, what, and when email, contacts, calendar items, tasks, bookmarks, and photos were transferred between devices. It is important to note that operating system artifacts such as registry, event logs, and others will be available for correlation and validation of your findings too.
iCloud maintains detailed logs located in C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\Logs to determine the time line of when the features provided by the service were used. Log file naming schema follows this example format asl.221320_23feb12.log based on initial start up and system reboots. Photo Stream log entries provide more granular information on when photos are transferred plus the Bookmark log entries even disclose the primary Apple ID.
The preferences defined for each specific user who used the iCloud service can be found in this directory C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\Preferences. Specifically the mobilemeaccounts.plist file contains the account information along with configuration details on each service being used. Additionally the com.apple.dav.bookmark.msie.plist file is of interest as it lists what bookmarks are being transferred to Internet Explorer or Safari.
Media Stream artifacts are located in the C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MediaStream folder. The root level contains a SQLite database called local.db that has the Apple ID plus locations where pictures are uploaded and downloaded on the system. The same path has a DL and UL folder with logs indicating dates and times that a specific number of files were uploaded/downloaded to the locations defined in the database. Each file is assigned a unique asset number like this 0142e0bf66ffe3f3ed826c51e6d3cc4f0eaad7db8d in the logs. It would be nice to determine the algorithm used by Apple, allowing the identification of images outside the defined locations if anyone happens to know?
At this time, there does not appear to be any application specific artifacts for Mail, Calendar, Contacts and Tasks in the iCloud service thus you should be able to use the forensic tool of choice to parse Microsoft Outlook information from the system.
Final artifact of interest is when the iCloud Control Panel is opened you are presented the option to manage the service storage. Looking at the Backups section may give you some insight on the number of mobile devices such as iPhones, iPads, and iPods that are archiving to iCloud with the last successful completion date.