Title: Evaluation of smartphone data using a reference architecture

Authors: Heloise Pieterse; Martin Olivier; Renier Van Heerden

Addresses: Defence, Peace, Safety and Security, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, South Africa; Department of Computer Science, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa ' Department of Computer Science, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa ' Meraka Institute, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, South Africa; School of Information and Communication Technology, Nelson Mandela University, Pretoria, South Africa

Abstract: The 21st century is continuously witnessing the growth and evolution of smartphone technology. Central to this evolution is the use of popular smartphone applications. The frequent use of smartphone applications by people for everyday activities allows for the creation and storage of large quantities of smartphone data. Smartphone data is susceptible to change and can be compromised by anti-forensic tools, malware or malicious users. It is, therefore, important to establish the authenticity of such data before forming any conclusions. The first step to establishing the authenticity of smartphone data is to acquire a better understanding of the expected behaviour of smartphone applications. This paper introduces a reference architecture for smartphone applications, which captures the architectural components and models the expected behaviour of smartphone applications. An experiment conducted to examine the smartphone data of Android's default messaging application indicates that the reference architecture can assist digital forensic professionals in identifying authentic smartphone data.

Keywords: digital forensics; smartphone forensics; smartphones; authenticity; reference architecture; Android; iOS and applications; smartphone data.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESDF.2019.098773

International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, 2019 Vol.11 No.2, pp.160 - 182

Received: 18 Aug 2017
Accepted: 01 Mar 2018
Published online: 02 Apr 2019 *

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