Windows released a security update on the 9^th August which means that cookies are no longer stored in the usual <username>@<service>.txt, but are now a random set of 8 alphanumeric characters, e.g. A1B2C3D4.txt. It seems this has broken a lot of software, especially those than delete cookies as they probably rely on the fact that cookies had a very conventional naming method. Old cookies stay the same as you can see from the below screen shot of my cookies folder.

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Internet Explorer stores files downloaded from the internet in a cache called Temporary Internet Files (e.g. html pages, images, CSS files). Each cached file is assigned an alphanumeric cache name. Some index.dat files serve to map the cached name with the filename and URL it came from. Other index.dat files store the user’s cookies or web browser history (by default 20 days’ worth). index.dat files are in binary format, and need to be viewed using a hex editor.

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