#Plistedit pro windows mac os x#
#Plistedit pro windows portable#
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If you were to open this same file in a plist editor one can clearly see the structure of the file better as seen in Figure 2. It is obviously very hard to read in this format. Figure 1 below shows the XML formatted plist viewed using the program TextEdit, which comes installed on all Mac’s.

Binary formatted plists will perform faster if the plist is a large collection of data. Binary formats are still used today but, one will rarely find an ASCII formatted plist. The other two formats are binary and ASCII.

#Plistedit pro windows portable#

This format is more portable then that of the alternatives and can be edited manually where as the other two options are not. The most recent, and more common, format one will see is the XML format. Plists can take one of three different formats. They are actually found within Linux and Unix distributions.

#Plistedit pro windows mac os x#

It should be noted that plist are not a Mac OS X item. Similar to Windows Registry entries, if you change any value set in the file, the program will run differently. Each contains the settings for the program, which calls the plist. The information contained within these files is different for each program on the system. A little later we will explore the structure of a plist file. Plists can be considered the “registry” for OS X. These types give you the means to produce data that is meaningfully structured, transportable, storable, and accessible, but still as efficient as possible” (Property List Programming Topics, 2008). Apple Developers describe the plist as follows, “property lists organize data into named values and lists of values using several object types.

In this paper I will be comparing the Mac version to the Registry entries found in Windows.įirst off, it is important to know what a Property List (plist) actually is, and the type of information that can be stored within them. These files contain information that can make or break a case. Property Lists are very similar to that of the Windows Registry. For this reason, it is important for forensic examiners to understand where they can find similar information in Mac OS X as they would find in Windows. In today’s world, Macintosh (Mac) computers are becoming very popular.

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In Farmer’s paper, he explores areas of the registry pertaining to the location of autorun locations, recent items, wireless networks, Internet history, and 3rd party software that has been installed on a Windows machine. This paper explored some of the key locations of where vital information could be found during a computer investigation. In 2007, Derrick Farmer, a Champlain College student, wrote a paper entitled “A Forensic Analysis of the Windows Registry”. All opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors. All information looked at this in this paper has been the product of personal research. Let it be noted that this paper is by no means a complete look into the property lists and Mac OS X.