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

Summary

In this chapter, we learned the differences between acquisition methods and what kind of data we can expect to find in an iOS extraction. We learned how the Checkm8 exploit works, how this vulnerability can be used to gain access to a device's filesystem, and its limits. Then, we discussed agent-based acquisitions and learned what iOS versions support this acquisition.

Jailbreaks are a fascinating topic in the iOS world; we discussed two of the most popular ones, checkra1n and unc0ver, and their compatibility. Then, we learned how to jailbreak a device using checkra1n.

Finally, we learned how to perform a logical acquisition using Cellebrite UFED and Elcomsoft iOS Forensic Toolkit, and we approached two different options to perform a full filesystem acquisition.

Keep in mind that in this chapter, we focused on After First Unlock (AFU) acquisition methods, so it's imperative that the examiner has full access to the device. Over the course of the next chapters...