Digital Forensics and Cyber Crime. First International ICST Conference, ICDF2C 2009, Albany, NY, USA, September 30-October 2, 2009, Revised Selected Papers

Research Article

iForensics: Forensic Analysis of Instant Messaging on Smart Phones

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  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-642-11534-9_2,
        author={Mohammad Husain and Ramalingam Sridhar},
        title={iForensics: Forensic Analysis of Instant Messaging on Smart Phones},
        proceedings={Digital Forensics and Cyber Crime. First International ICST Conference, ICDF2C 2009, Albany, NY, USA, September 30-October 2, 2009, Revised Selected Papers},
        proceedings_a={ICDF2C},
        year={2012},
        month={5},
        keywords={smart phone forensics instant messaging chat forensics iPhone forensics},
        doi={10.1007/978-3-642-11534-9_2}
    }
    
  • Mohammad Husain
    Ramalingam Sridhar
    Year: 2012
    iForensics: Forensic Analysis of Instant Messaging on Smart Phones
    ICDF2C
    Springer
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-11534-9_2
Mohammad Husain1,*, Ramalingam Sridhar1,*
  • 1: University at Buffalo, State University of New York
*Contact email: imhusain@buffalo.edu, rsridhar@buffalo.edu

Abstract

Smart phones with Internet capability are growing in popularity, due to many of their useful capabilities. Among other handy features of smart phones, Instant Messaging (IM) is very popular due to the level of convenience it provides in interpersonal communications. As the usage of IM on smart phone is increasing rapidly, it is important to take measures in advance from forensic standpoint forecasting the potential use of it in cyber crimes such as the cyber stalking and cyber bullying. Although, current IM applications for smart phones are in most cases a downsized version of the one used on traditional computers, diverse structure of file systems and storage device on different smart phones pose unique challenges to forensic examiners for recovering digital evidences of a conversation under investigation. In this work, we study and report the forensic analysis of three different IMs: AIM, Yahoo! Messenger and Google Talk, (both client based and web based version) on Apple iPhone. Our results show that the forensic analysis of IMs on smart phones has significant value and needs further attention.