Magnet Axiom fall update: ChatGPT, Chromium, private messaging support, and more
As we reach the mid-point of the Magnet Axiom and Magnet Axiom Cyber 9 series, we have continued to build their capabilities, with new and updated features that help you work more efficiently.
Some feature highlights from the last three releases include:
- Transcription of audio and video
- Speed improvement for the creation of Portable Cases
- New remote endpoint workflow in Axiom Cyber that integrates with Magnet Nexus
- Updated options for creating Event Snapshots
- Options added for animated map playback
To keep your cases current with the latest apps and services, we also rolled out updated and expanded artifact coverage for Axiom with updates and additions to:
If you missed the last quarterly update for Axiom, check out the blog here. For more information on the major 9.0 release, visit the Axiom and Axiom Cyber 9.0 release materials.
New and updated artifacts in Axiom
The artifact team are constantly exploring new applications to ensure you’re getting the latest artifacts that can be the difference-maker in your cases. As well as ensuring our existing artifacts remain up to date with any changes and updates that occur over time.
In our recent releases, we have tackled some important artifact categories, including:
ChatGPT
We also recently introduced support for ChatGPT messages providing important insight into the user prompts and AI-generated responses for these sessions and will continue to develop this artifact coverage in the coming releases. Use of ChatGPT has increased rapidly since its launch with a reported 800 million monthly active users in March of 2025.
Many users turn to ChatGPT over traditional search engines for more immediate, detailed responses with the opportunity to review and refine results without manually browsing through content. In a recent survey 27% of respondents in the US reported using AI tools in place of traditional search engines.
Chromium browser support
We have added several artifacts that provide broad support for chromium-based browsers without requiring support for each specific browser. There artifacts can provide important insight into user activity on the browser, including: web visits, web history, logins, autofill, downloads, cache records, bookmarks and more.
Chromium is an open-source web browser project, maintained by Google, which is the foundation of many modern browsers including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Samsung Internet, and Opera. In internal testing of the most common Chromium browsers the majority were successfully recovered automatically, and in instances where certain browsers stored data in different locations it was possible to add the paths manually.
Private messaging applications
A number of the artifacts that were added and updated over this last quarter are for private messaging applications. These applications have grown significantly in prominence in investigations as they are a popular choice for communications that the parties involved are looking to minimize records of the exchange.
In this past quarter we have added or updated important messaging applications including:
- Signal – Added support for decrypting attachments as well as updated version support
- Zangi – Added support for calls, groups, and messages
- Sessions – Update decryption, communities, and messages
- WeChat – Updated acquisition and parsing of attachments as well as added compressed message support
- Telegram – Added support for iOS accounts and users and updated Android version support
- Threema – Updated message format support
- Line – Added support for Groups on Android
- Instagram – Updates parsing of direct messages on iOS devices
- Snapchat – Updated parsing of chat messages and recipient information
In addition to these popular private messaging applications, we also expanded support for managed messaging applications like Microsoft Teams as well as added Warrant Return support for Cloud Google calls and voicemails. If you encounter chat applications that Axiom doesn’t yet natively support you can still use the Dynamic App Finder to extract information from the databases of these applications, check out the knowledge base article Create custom artifacts from SQLite database hits (customer credentials required).
Recent feature additions and updates to Axiom
Transcription of audio and video
The ability to quickly capture high-quality video, live and motion photos, and audio clips with phones, tablets, and personal computers has led to a drastic increase in media being created and shared. With this volume of media also appearing in forensics investigations, we have added the ability for Axiom and Axiom Cyber to transcribe audio and video files to text, facilitating the search, analysis, and review of media evidence.
To learn more, check out our blog: Quickly search audio and video evidence with transcription in Magnet Axiom and Axiom Cyber.
Available with Axiom Advanced, Premier & Cyber licenses
Speed improvement for the creation of Portable Cases
Time is always a critical factor in digital forensics investigations. Your stakeholders rely on you, and your team, for timely sharing of the insights that help them understand what really happened in an incident.
To help you get those important insights to your stakeholders as quickly as possible, we have made some significant improvements to the speed of creating a Portable Case from Magnet Axiom and Axiom Cyber. We tested a range of cases, both internally and externally with customers, and found the improvements averaged around ~70% faster. In cases that included a large volume of media, such as mobile devices, we saw the most significant improvements in the performance of Portable Case creation with results being as high as 94% and 96% faster.
To learn more about the speed improvements in Axiom Portable Case creation, check out our blog: Create Magnet Axiom Portable Cases in record time.
Exclusive to Axiom Cyber: New remote endpoint workflow for use with Magnet Nexus hybrid collection agent
Managing multiple agents across different solutions and multiple endpoints creates unnecessary admin work, slows response times if you need to redeploy it, and introduces complexity. To solve this, we’ve introduced the new Magnet Nexus hybrid collection agent for Nexus users.
It is a single, lightweight agent that works with both Nexus (SaaS-based endpoint investigation solution) and Magnet Axiom Cyber. This gives DFIR teams the flexibility to collect at cloud speed and scale or keep data on-prem for compliance, all while maintaining a unified, auditable view of activity.
If you need to scale up your investigations or you’re exploring a move to the cloud, now you can do it at your own pace. With Nexus and Axiom Cyber working together, you get flexibility and control over where and how you perform your investigations.
(The new hybrid agent is designed for Nexus users who also want to perform collections with Axiom Cyber. It does not replace the Axiom Cyber remote acquire agent.) To learn more about the Nexus hybrid agent and the new remote endpoint collection workflow in Axiom Cyber, check out the full announcement here.
Available with both Nexus and Axiom Cyber licenses.
Right-click to create an Event Snapshot
To help both you and your stakeholders save time and collaborate efficiently, we added a patent-pending interface into Axiom, Event Snapshots, that helps focus investigations on the most relevant digital events surrounding an incident. Since its initial release we have expanded the options to generate an Event Snapshot with the ability to right click on any supported artifact and initiate the Snapshot wizard and generate an Event Snapshot to quickly generate this great view of data.
To learn more and see Event Snapshots and the new Timeline card in action, visit our blog: Focus your investigations with Event Snapshots in Magnet Axiom
Available with Axiom Essentials, Advanced, Premier & Cyber licenses
Updates to our animated map playback speed
To help add important context to your reports and testimony in court, we have introduced animated maps with Route View in Magnet Axiom and Axiom Cyber. With Route View, you can now show the movements of devices based on the geolocation information from device data, combining location and timestamp data to show the path a device takes for a given time frame. The ability to easily animate map routes mitigates time-consuming and labor-intensive manual processes required to display location evidence in an engaging and visually appealing format. We recently added additional reduced speeds and a new x200 speed for animated route playback, providing more options to suit the duration of the animations being created.
To learn more and see an example of an Animated Map Route, visit out blog Moving in the right direction with Animated Maps
Available with Axiom Essentials, Advanced, Premier & Cyber licenses
Get Magnet Axiom today!
If you’re already using Axiom or Axiom Cyber, you can download the latest version at the Customer Portal to ensure you have the latest and greatest features and artifact coverage. If you want to try Axiom for yourself, request a free trial today!