You're reading from Practical Mobile Forensics - Fourth Edition

Product typeBook

Published inApr 2020

PublisherPackt

ISBN-139781838647520

Edition4th Edition

Tools

iOS Android

Concepts

Forensics

Authors (4):

Rohit Tamma

Oleg Skulkin

Heather Mahalik

Satish Bommisetty

View More author details

Android Data Analysis and Recovery

In the previous chapter, we covered various logical and physical extraction techniques. In physical extraction, a bit-by-bit image of the Android device is obtained, which contains valuable information. In this chapter, we will learn how to analyze and extract relevant data, such as call logs and text messages, from an image file. While the data extraction and analysis techniques provide information about various details, not all techniques can provide information about the deleted data. Data recovery is a crucial aspect of mobile forensics, as it helps to unearth the deleted items.

This chapter aims at covering various techniques, that can be used by a forensic analyst to recover the data from an Android device.

In this chapter, we will cover the following two major topics:

Analyzing and extracting data from Android image files using the Autopsy...

Analyzing and extracting data from Android image files using the Autopsy tool

The term Android image refers to the physical image (also called a forensic image or raw image) that is obtained by performing any of the physical data extraction techniques. Using the techniques explained in Chapter 9, Android Data Extraction Techniques, you can image the entire /data/data block or any particular block that is of relevance to the investigation. Once the image is obtained, an investigator like you can manually go through the contents of the file or take advantage of the available tools to parse through the contents. Commercial tools, such as Cellebrite and XRY, can drill into the data and present a comprehensive picture of the contents. Autopsy is one of the very widely used open source tools in the forensics world that performs an excellent job of analyzing an Android image.

...

Understanding techniques to recover deleted files from the SD card and the internal memory

Data recovery is one of the most significant and powerful aspects of forensic analysis. The ability to recover deleted data can be crucial to crack many civil and criminal cases. From a normal user's point of view, recovering data that has been deleted would usually refer to the operating system's built-in solutions, such as the Recycle Bin in Windows. While it's true that data can be recovered from these locations, due to an increase in user awareness, these options don't often work. For instance, on a desktop computer, people now use Shift + Delete as a way to delete a file completely from their desktop.

Data recovery is the process of retrieving deleted data from a device when it cannot be accessed normally. Consider the scenario where a mobile phone has been seized...

Summary

In this chapter, we learned various techniques to recover deleted data from an Android device. This process depends on various factors, which heavily rely on access to the data residing in the internal memory and SD card. We saw various techniques to recover deleted data from both SD card as well as internal memory. While the recovery of deleted items from external storage, such as an SD card, is easy, the recovery of deleted items from the internal memory takes considerable effort. We have also learned SQLite file-parsing and file-carving techniques, using which deleted data can be extracted from an Android device. With this knowledge, you can now perform data recovery during a forensic investigation.

The next chapter discusses the forensic analysis of Android apps and malware and the reverse engineering of Android apps.

...

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Authors (4)

Rohit Tamma

Rohit Tamma is a senior program manager currently working with Microsoft. With over 10 years of experience in the field of security, his background spans management and technical consulting roles in the areas of application and cloud security, mobile security, penetration testing, and secure coding. Rohit has also co-authored Learning Android Forensics, from Packt, which explain various ways to perform forensics on mobile platforms. You can contact him on Twitter at @RohitTamma.
Read more about Rohit Tamma

Oleg Skulkin

Oleg Skulkin is the Head of Digital Forensics and Malware Analysis Laboratory at Group-IB. Oleg has worked in the fields of digital forensics, incident response, and cyber threat intelligence and research for over a decade, fueling his passion for uncovering new techniques used by hidden adversaries. Oleg has authored and co-authored multiple blog posts, papers, and books on related topics and holds GCFA and GCTI certifications.
Read more about Oleg Skulkin

Heather Mahalik

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

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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