Saturday, December 17, 2005

Cell/Mobile Phone Forensics

Similar to my earlier post on computer forensics, cell phones (a.k.a. "mobile phones" outside of the USA) now often contain images and/or audio recordings. On recent phones, the images may be still shots or even video. The audio may be part of a video clip or be an independent voice dictation. These pieces of information may prove critical to solving or prosecuting a case, whether it be a bombing, mugging, extortion, or some other type of crime, or investigating an accident.

Yesterday I ran across a product announcement for a cell phone data extractor that currently works in North America. The product is called CellDEK and it reportedly allows extracting the data on a cell phone, its SIM card, and its Flash Memory card. It also reportedly works with Blackberry(tm) devices (manufactured by Research in Motion). I have not tested this myself and I am therefore not endorsing or critiquing it. I have no direct or indirect ties to this company and am only reporting it as something that caught my interest.

As is often the case, the guys wearing the white hats (law enforcement, national security, and safety board types) have to stay cognizant of lots of emerging technologies. Not all of them make it to the 'big time' like Apple's Ipod(tm) but all it takes is one important case to have the white hatters scrambling to come up with the capability and procedures to recover, authenticate, restore, and enhance the data from a new type of device.

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