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

Google Account acquisition – over-the-air


Android is a Google OS. Relying heavily on cloud services, most of which are provided by Google, Android devices inevitably leave traces on Google's servers. Extracting information from Google's servers is a great way to complement information available in the device itself. While over-the-air acquisition can be used when all other acquisition methods fail, it is not limited to acquiring Android devices. Instead, acquisition of Google Accounts can provide a much deeper insight into user activities than what's available in a single Android smartphone.

Note that not all Android devices come with Google Mobile Services; we'll discuss this in detail later on. In particular, Amazon devices (Fire tablets and Amazon Fire Phone) do not come with any Google services preinstalled. However, end users may add Google services later on.

Why Google Account?

Android backups are limited at best. In the world of Android, cloud backups are still new and (as of Android...