Preface

The exponential growth in smartphones has revolutionized several aspects of our lives. Smartphones are one of the most quickly adopted consumer technologies in recent history. Despite their small size, smartphones are capable of performing many tasks, such as sending private messages and confidential emails, taking photos and videos, making online purchases, viewing sensitive information such as medical records and salary slips, completing banking transactions, accessing social networking sites, and managing business tasks. Hence, a mobile device is now a huge repository of sensitive data, which could provide a wealth of information about its owner. This has in turn led to the evolution of mobile device forensics, a branch of digital forensics, which deals with retrieving data from a mobile device. Today, there is a huge demand for specialized forensic experts, especially given the fact that the data retrieved from a mobile device is court-admissible.

Mobile forensics is all about using scientific methodologies to recover data stored within a mobile phone for legal purposes. Unlike traditional computer forensics, mobile forensics has limitations in obtaining evidence due to rapid changes in technology and the fast-paced evolution of mobile software. With different operating systems and a wide range of models being released onto the market, mobile forensics has expanded over the past few years. Specialized forensic techniques and skills are required in order to extract data under different conditions.

This book takes you through various techniques to help you learn how to forensically recover data from different mobile devices with the iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile operating systems. This book also covers behind the scenes details, such as how data is stored and what tools actually do in the background, giving you deeper knowledge on several topics. Step-by-step instructions enable you to try forensically recovering data yourself.

The book is organized in a manner that allows you to focus independently on chapters that are specific to your required platform.