Book Image

Practical Mobile Forensics - Second Edition

By : Heather Mahalik, Rohit Tamma, Satish Bommisetty
Book Image

Practical Mobile Forensics - Second Edition

By: Heather Mahalik, Rohit Tamma, Satish Bommisetty

Overview of this book

Mobile phone forensics is the science of retrieving data from a mobile phone under forensically sound conditions. This book is an update to Practical Mobile Forensics and it delves into the concepts of mobile forensics and its importance in today's world. We will deep dive into mobile forensics techniques in iOS 8 - 9.2, Android 4.4 - 6, and Windows Phone devices. We will demonstrate the latest open source and commercial mobile forensics tools, enabling you to analyze and retrieve data effectively. You will learn how to introspect and retrieve data from cloud, and document and prepare reports for your investigations. By the end of this book, you will have mastered the current operating systems and techniques so you can recover data from mobile devices by leveraging open source solutions.

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Practical Mobile Forensics - Second Edition
Heather Mahalik | Rohit Tamma | Satish Bommisetty
May, 2016 | 412 pages
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Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Practical Mobile Forensics - Second Edition
Practical Mobile Forensics - Second Edition
Credits
Credits
About the Authors
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Introduction to Mobile Forensics
Introduction to Mobile Forensics
Why do we need mobile forensics?
Mobile forensics
The mobile phone evidence extraction process
Practical mobile forensic approaches
Potential evidence stored on mobile phones
Rules of evidence
Good forensic practices
Summary
2
Understanding the Internals of iOS Devices
Understanding the Internals of iOS Devices
iPhone models
iPhone hardware
iPad models
Understanding the iPad hardware
Apple Watch models
Understanding the Apple Watch hardware
File system
The HFS Plus file system
Disk layout
iPhone operating system
Summary
3
iOS Forensic Tools
iOS Forensic Tools
Working with Elcomsoft iOS Forensic Toolkit
Oxygen Forensic Detective
Working with Cellebrite UFED Physical Analyzer
Working with BlackLight
Open source or free methods
Working with Magnet ACQUIRE
Working with NowSecureCE
Summary
4
Data Acquisition from iOS Devices
Data Acquisition from iOS Devices
Operating modes of iOS devices
Physical acquisition
Encrypted file systems
File system acquisition
Logical acquisition
Bypassing the passcode
Acquisition of jailbroken devices
Summary
5
Data Acquisition from iOS Backups
Data Acquisition from iOS Backups
iTunes backup
Working with iCloud backups
Summary
6
iOS Data Analysis and Recovery
iOS Data Analysis and Recovery
Timestamps
SQLite databases
Property lists
Other important files
The Apple Watch
Recovering deleted SQLite records
Summary
7
Understanding Android
Understanding Android
The evolution of Android
The Android model
The Android security
The Android file hierarchy
The Android file system
Summary
8
Android Forensic Setup and Pre Data Extraction Techniques
Android Forensic Setup and Pre Data Extraction Techniques
Setting up the forensic environment for Android
Screen lock bypassing techniques
Gaining root access
Summary
9
Android Data Extraction Techniques
Android Data Extraction Techniques
Data extraction techniques
Summary
10
Android Data Analysis and Recovery
Android Data Analysis and Recovery
Analyzing an Android image
Android data recovery
Summary
11
Android App Analysis, Malware, and Reverse Engineering
Android App Analysis, Malware, and Reverse Engineering
Analyzing Android apps
Reverse engineering Android apps
Android malware
Summary
12
Windows Phone Forensics
Windows Phone Forensics
Windows Phone OS
The Windows Phone file system
Data acquisition
Summary
13
Parsing Third-Party Application Files
Parsing Third-Party Application Files
Third-party application overview
Encoding versus encryption
Application data storage
Forensic methods used to extract third-party application data
Summary

Application data storage

Almost all applications rely on SQLite for data storage. These databases can be stored internally on the device or on the SD card for relevant phones. When SQLite is used, temporary memory files are commonly associated to each database to make SQLite more efficient. These files, which were previously mentioned, are write ahead logs (WAL) and shared memory files (SHM). These files may contain data that is not present in the SQLite database. Few tools will parse this information, but the ones that are offered by Sanderson Forensics, will get you started. Go to http://sandersonforensics.com/forum/content.php?261-Timelining-events-in-a-WAL-based-SQLite-DB. We can see several WAL and SHM files associated with various WhatsApp database files in the following screenshot:

An SHM and WAL example

In addition to SQLite databases, other devices rely on Plist, XML, JSON, and DAT files for application data storage, account data storage, purchase information, and user preferences...

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