Analysis of a third-party application for mobile forensic investigation

Abstract

Nowadays, third-party applications form an important part of the mobile environment, and social networking applications in particular can leave a variety of user footprints compared to other applications. Digital forensics of mobile third-party applications can provide important evidence to forensics investigators. However, most mobile operating systems are now updated on a frequent basis, and developers are constantly releasing new versions of them. For these reasons, forensic investigators experience difficulties in finding the locations and meanings of data during digital investigations. Therefore, this paper presents scenario-based methods of forensic analysis for a specific third-party social networking service application on a specific mobile device. When applied to certain third-party applications, digital forensics can provide forensic investigators with useful data for the investigation process. The main purpose of the forensic analysis proposed in the present paper is to determine whether the general use of third-party applications leaves data in the mobile internal storage of mobile devices and whether such data are meaningful for forensic purposes. © KIPS.