CyberGlossary

Forensics & IR

Mobile Forensics

Also known as: Smartphone forensics, Cellphone forensics

Definition

The forensic acquisition and analysis of smartphones, tablets, and wearables to extract communications, app data, location, and other artefacts.

Mobile forensics tackles devices with strong encryption, locked bootloaders, and constant cloud synchronisation. Acquisition levels range from manual/photographic to logical (backups), file system (privileged extractions), and physical (chip-off, JTAG, ISP). Commercial suites such as Cellebrite UFED, Magnet AXIOM, MSAB XRY, GrayKey, and Oxygen Forensic Detective handle iOS and Android extraction, parsing SQLite stores for messages, call logs, contacts, geolocation, and app artefacts (WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram). Investigators must consider keystore-protected data, Secure Enclave/Knox boundaries, and lawful access constraints. Process and documentation align with NIST SP 800-101 and ISO/IEC 27037.

Examples

  • Performing a Full File System extraction of an iPhone with Cellebrite to recover deleted messages.
  • Decoding an Android device's WhatsApp database to reconstruct chat history.

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