macOS Idea for a project.....advice appreciated

[ccorlett7]

Hi all

Im currently on my years placement and thinking of ideas for my final year uni project in which we have to create a forensic tool and present it.

My main idea so far that I am going to look into further is with Time Machine on the Mac.
I plan on creating a piece of software that will be able to retrieve keyword searches from within Time Machine backups and to create a kind of time line/life span of files through examining Time Machine entries.

Would this be possible to do and how would it go down as a project idea?
also, can any of you point me in the right direction as to good sources of research?

How possible would this be to program bearing in mind I only have experience with using Java at University.

Thanks

 

[miles01110]

It's going to be hard with just Java...

 

[robbieduncan]

Assuming the backup is mounted then you can just list the directories which are timestamped using the File object and then list the files in it etc (paying attention to hardlinks as those are files that have not changed since the last backup) building a nice in-memory representation of the backups. Sounds plausible to me.