Book Image

iOS Forensics for Investigators

By : Gianluca Tiepolo
5 (1)
Book Image

iOS Forensics for Investigators

5 (1)
By: Gianluca Tiepolo

Overview of this book

Professionals working in the mobile forensics industry will be able to put their knowledge to work with this practical guide to learning how to extract and analyze all available data from an iOS device. This book is a comprehensive, how-to guide that leads investigators through the process of collecting mobile devices and preserving, extracting, and analyzing data, as well as building a report. Complete with step-by-step explanations of essential concepts, practical examples, and self-assessment questions, this book starts by covering the fundamentals of mobile forensics and how to overcome challenges in extracting data from iOS devices. Once you've walked through the basics of iOS, you’ll learn how to use commercial tools to extract and process data and manually search for artifacts stored in database files. Next, you'll find out the correct workflows for handling iOS devices and understand how to extract valuable information to track device usage. You’ll also get to grips with analyzing key artifacts, such as browser history, the pattern of life data, location data, and social network forensics. By the end of this book, you'll be able to establish a proper workflow for handling iOS devices, extracting all available data, and analyzing it to gather precious insights that can be reported as prosecutable evidence.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
1
Section 1 – Data Acquisition from iOS Devices
4
Section 2 – iOS Data Analysis
14
Section 3 – Reporting

Analyzing photos and videos

Every time a photo or video is taken through a device's camera or saved onto a device, iOS analyzes it and generates a multitude of metadata, which is stored in the Photos.sqlite database.

The following is a list of events that occur during the process:

  1. First, the newly created photo or video is saved in /private/var/mobile/Media/DCIM/1**APPLE/ as a JPG, HEIC, MP4, or MOV file. The folder name will iterate upward (100APPLE, 101APPLE, 102APPLE, and so on) as more photos or videos are stored on the device.
  2. Additionally, the PreviewWellImage.tiff image is created and stored in /private/var/mobile/Media/PhotoData/MISC/. This image is the thumbnail that is displayed in the Photos app where the most recent image is displayed.
  3. As the new media is stored, a new entry is created in the Photos.sqlite database, in the ZGENERICASSET table. Since iOS 14, this table is now called ZASSET. The new record will contain metadata such as the date and...