I favor UTC time stamps for everything, but I do like to see the
system's time zone (and thus the local time) at least once.
On Jul 6, 2009, at 8:15 AM, Andreas Schuster wrote:
Dear developers,
I noticed that Volatility displays dates and times in up to three
different timezones:
1. UTC (e.g. pslist, sockets, and the corresponding scanner modules)
2. local time of the system under examination (e.g. datetime, ident
commands)
3. local time of the examiner's workstation (when using ctime() for
formatting)
I usually prefer UTC, especially when I have to consolidate
timelines across systems that are distributed across different
timezones. Using the local time may be a good choice when dealing
with less-technical people.
So, I don't think there's a "best" option and propose to let the
user decide about the timezone that best suits his/her needs. The
handling (and output format) should be consistent to avoid any
misinterpretation and confusion.
In order to provide a consistent interface to users and programmers,
I propose to add functions to the framework (or to modify existing
functions, respectively):
- to switch between the three options in a consistent way (i.e. add
an option to the standard parser)
- to read timestamps in all applicable formats (mostly KSYSTEM_TIME,
but also LARGE_INTEGER with bit shifting) from buffers and address
spaces (see forensics/win32/datetime.py)
- to produce the timestamp in an easy to read, unambiguous, and
sortable format (preferably in accordance with ISO 8601)
Before I start with coding, I want to hear your opinion on this. I
appreciate any comments.
Thanks!
Andreas
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Jesse
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