Mobile forensics

Data Solutions Laboratory doesn’t offer data recovery services from mobile devices anymore. The text on this page is informational.

Mobile forensics is a branch of digital forensics whose primary function is to find and recover data from mobile devices. Although it is common for mobile devices to refer to smartphones, it also includes all kind of tablets, PDAs, GPS devices, etc..

Mobile forensics is a relatively young area, which started to develop at the beginning of this century, a little later after the expansion of mobile devices.

Reasons for mobile forensics

• widespread use of mobile devices as a storage for private and corporate data
• use of mobile devices for online transactions
• law enforcement and criminal evidence
• subject location history
• private detective work

One of the main differences of computer and mobile forensics is in constant change and growth of mobile hardware – one of the biggest is the growth of internal memory storage, and also software development, which are shown through different operating ecosystems, as well as different ways in which applications store their data.

Mobile forensics methods

• 1Manual acquisition – It is performed through mobile device interface (most commonly some type of USB connection) by inspecting current memory states. Primary benefit of this model is that all is readable as is, human way. The drawback is that you can only see what is in the memory, which doesn’t include deleted files.
• 2

  Logical acquisition – Also through the interface of the manufacturer, a lot like a backup which you make when you synchronize the device with the computer. This also allows access only to the current logical structure which is a bit-by-bit copy, but also limited and without deleted files.

• 3Physical acquisition – This process implies making a complete copy of physical memory, a full clone. The advantage here is that it is possible to find partial texts, messages, contacts, history of traces and movements that exist in the phone at the moment of acquisition.