Working with iOS artifacts
Generally speaking, the artifacts that can be found on an iOS device can be grouped into one of the following categories:
- SQLite databases
- Property lists
- Protocol buffers
- XML files
- Log files
While the last two files don't pose any kind of concern as they are essentially text files and, as such, can be viewed with pretty much any text editor, the others may be (and often are) stored in binary format, so they require specific tools or libraries to parse through the data.
Introducing SQLite
Almost every application on an iOS device, including system ones like Messages, Contacts, or Email, needs a place to store data for the long term. This is achieved by using SQLite, which is an open source, small, self-contained relational database. SQLite databases can be recognized by the .sqlite or .sqlite3 file extensions, although some databases are given the .db extension, or other extensions as well.
The reason why SQLite...
