Book Image

Mobile Forensics ??? Advanced Investigative Strategies

By : Oleg Afonin, Vladimir Katalov
Book Image

Mobile Forensics ??? Advanced Investigative Strategies

By: Oleg Afonin, Vladimir Katalov

Overview of this book

Investigating digital media is impossible without forensic tools. Dealing with complex forensic problems requires the use of dedicated tools, and even more importantly, the right strategies. In this book, you’ll learn strategies and methods to deal with information stored on smartphones and tablets and see how to put the right tools to work. We begin by helping you understand the concept of mobile devices as a source of valuable evidence. Throughout this book, you will explore strategies and "plays" and decide when to use each technique. We cover important techniques such as seizing techniques to shield the device, and acquisition techniques including physical acquisition (via a USB connection), logical acquisition via data backups, over-the-air acquisition. We also explore cloud analysis, evidence discovery and data analysis, tools for mobile forensics, and tools to help you discover and analyze evidence. By the end of the book, you will have a better understanding of the tools and methods used to deal with the challenges of acquiring, preserving, and extracting evidence stored on smartphones, tablets, and the cloud.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Mobile Forensics – Advanced Investigative Strategies
Credits
Foreword
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

Tutorial – physical acquisition with Elcomsoft iOS Forensic Toolkit


Let's use iOS Forensic Toolkit to extract the content of an iPhone. However, first let's take a look at what actually happens at the time the tool performs physical acquisition.

What the does the tool do?

The first step of the acquisition process involves putting the device into a so-called DFU mode (Debug and Firmware Upgrade) with a combination of Home and Power buttons. Elcomsoft iOS Forensic Toolkit displays tips on how to put the device to this mode.

Once the device is in its DFU mode, we can use its F function, emulating a firmware upgrade. However, instead of Apple's original firmware, the Toolkit attempts to load an altered one. The device will verify the new firmware by checking its digital signature via bootrom functions (these are read-only and can't be switched off). Now, if we're acquiring an iPhone 4 or earlier, the Toolkit can use a bootrom exploit that allows skipping the check and sideloading the altered firmware...