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

Chapter 4. Practical Steps to Android Acquisition

When approaching an Android smartphone, there is no straightforward route to acquisition. Due to extremely high fragmentation of the Android platform, your approach to acquiring an Android smartphone will vary greatly between devices. Your approach will depend on who made the device and what chipset was used; what version of Android it is running and what version of Android it was originally released with; whether or not the device has an unlocked (or unlockable) bootloader, and whether it was or can be rooted. If that's not enough, you'll have different options depending on the encryption status of the device (which also depends on the device's make, model, and version of Android).

This chapter offers detailed discussion and demonstration of the various physical acquisition methods available for a wide range of Android devices. We'll discuss how to use manufacturer-specific low-level service modes (LG, Qualcomm, and Mediatek), how to use...