The terms encoding and encryption are used so frequently when discussing applications and smartphone data that they are often confused. Encoding is essentially the process of obfuscating a message or piece of information to appear as raw code. In some cases, the goal of encoding is to make the data unrecognizable to the computer or the user. In reality, the primary goal of encoding is to transform the input into a different format using a publicly available scheme. In other words, anyone can easily decode an encoded value. Encryption, however, transforms the data using a key in order to keep its content confidential. So, encrypted text can only be reversed if you have the key. Most applications claim that they encrypt data or that the data is never saved to disk. While this is true for some, most are simply encoded. Encoding options can vary, but the most common option for smartphone data is Base64. Messaging apps often rely on Base64 encoding to make the data...
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You're reading from Practical Mobile Forensics, - Third Edition
Heather Mahalik is the senior director of digital intelligence at Cellebrite. She is a senior instructor and author for the SANS Institute, and she is also the course lead for the FOR585 Smartphone Forensic Analysis In-Depth course. With 18 years of experience in digital forensics, she continues to thrive on smartphone investigations, digital forensics, forensic course development and instruction, and research on application analysis and smartphone forensics.
Read more about Heather Mahalik
Satish Bommisetty is a security architect currently working with JDA. His primary areas of interest include web and mobile application security, cloud security, and iOS forensics. He has presented at security conferences, such as ClubHACK and C0C0n. Satish is one of the top bug bounty hunters and is listed in the halls of fame of Google, Facebook, PayPal, Microsoft, Yahoo, Salesforce, and more, for identifying and reporting their security vulnerabilities. You can reach him on Twitter at @satishb3.
Read more about Satish Bommisetty
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Authors (2)
Heather Mahalik is the senior director of digital intelligence at Cellebrite. She is a senior instructor and author for the SANS Institute, and she is also the course lead for the FOR585 Smartphone Forensic Analysis In-Depth course. With 18 years of experience in digital forensics, she continues to thrive on smartphone investigations, digital forensics, forensic course development and instruction, and research on application analysis and smartphone forensics.
Read more about Heather Mahalik
Satish Bommisetty is a security architect currently working with JDA. His primary areas of interest include web and mobile application security, cloud security, and iOS forensics. He has presented at security conferences, such as ClubHACK and C0C0n. Satish is one of the top bug bounty hunters and is listed in the halls of fame of Google, Facebook, PayPal, Microsoft, Yahoo, Salesforce, and more, for identifying and reporting their security vulnerabilities. You can reach him on Twitter at @satishb3.
Read more about Satish Bommisetty