A simple cost-effective framework for iPhone forensic analysis

Abstract

Apple iPhone has made significant impact on the society both as a handheld computing device and as a cellular phone. Due to the unique hardware system as well as storage structure, iPhone has already attracted the forensic community in digital investigation of the device. Currently available commercial products and methodologies for iPhone forensics are somewhat expensive, complex and often require additional hardware for analysis. Some products are not robust and often fail to extract optimal evidence without modifying the iPhone firmware which makes the analysis questionable in legal platforms. In this paper, we present a simple and inexpensive framework (iFF) for iPhone forensic analysis. Through experimental results using real device, we have shown the effectiveness of this framework in extracting digital evidence from an iPhone. © Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2011.