Comparative Study of Mobile Forensic Tools

Abstract

Mobile forensics is a field of digital forensics that is galloping at a rapid pace. It encompasses feature phone forensics as well as smartphone forensics. In the early days of mobile forensics, concentration was on somehow extracting data related to feature phones, which included contacts, call logs, SMS that were stored in phone memory and subscriber identity module (SIM) card. Mobile phones are large troves of personal information which if compromised can have a very damaging effect on the individual. As a result, companies are concentrating on securing the data both at rest and in motion. Towards this, encryption technologies are being used to provide robust security to prevent any data sniffing or man-in-the-middle attack. This is making the task of mobile forensics more difficult since companies are providing end-to-end data encryption. As a result, mobile forensics is becoming a nightmare and a big challenge for Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs). This work presents an experimental study of various mobile data acquisition tools used in past to extract data and proposes a manual method of data extraction that will prove to be an advantage over expensive commercial forensic tools.