The effects of switching the camera module from BlackBerry Curve 9360 devices

Abstract

A Photo-Response Non-Uniformity (PRNU) pattern is the ‘fingerprint’ of a digital camera, which is left in the images acquired with the camera. It can be used to identify the source of suspect images. For a case a BlackBerry phone with a camera was obtained and the question was if this phone was the source of certain suspect images. The phone was inaccessible, but the camera module was available for analysis. In this paper it is investigated if switching the camera module from one phone to another has an effect on the PRNU pattern. Results show that there is no significant difference between photos taken with the camera module still in the original phone and photos taken with the same camera module placed in a different phone. It is therefore possible to switch the camera module and use it for camera source identification, in cases where the original device is inaccessible.