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

Live imaging


Live imaging may be your last resort when acquiring an encrypted device. Since neither bootloader exploits nor custom recoveries can decrypt encrypted partitions, you may need to start and unlock the device with the correct PIN code in order to gain access to the encrypted data partition.

Live imaging of an Android device is similar to the process described in the Imaging via custom recovery – physical imaging via dd section.

Live imaging with root (via dd)

Live imaging is considered to be a less forensically-sound method compared to using a custom recovery or other acquisition methods. This method requires a rooted device with BusyBox installed. Rooting an Android device in general is not always safe or possible. Depending on the version of Android and the method used to obtain root access, rooting may modify the device boot image and/or its system and data partitions. Installing BusyBox may or may not modify the system partition. Rooting and installing BusyBox may also alter...