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

Working with Cellebrite Physical Analyzer

Cellebrite software is generally regarded as the golden standard for mobile forensics among law enforcement and security organizations due to its powerful features, wide device compatibility, frequent updates, and easy-to-use user interface. Their most popular tools are Cellebrite Universal Forensic Extraction Device (Cellebrite UFED), which we used in the previous chapter to acquire the device's filesystem, and Cellebrite Physical Analyzer, which is used for data analysis and reporting.

We will now learn how to import the extracted data into Physical Analyzer and then we'll go over some of the main features of this powerful tool.

Loading evidence and selective decoding

The first step in a Physical Analyzer examination is loading the evidence into the tool. You can accomplish this by using the case wizard, which is a step-by-step procedure that will guide you through the process and also show you some optional features that...