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The Role of Mobile Forensics in Terrorism Investigations Involving the Use of Cloud Storage Service and Communication Apps

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Abstract

Mobile technologies can be, and have been, exploited in terrorist activities. In this paper, we highlight the importance of mobile forensics in the investigation of such activities. Specifically, using a series of controlled experiments on Android and Windows devices, we demonstrate how mobile forensics techniques can be used to recover evidentiary artefacts from client devices. There are three simulation scenarios, namely: (1) information propagation, (2) information concealment and (3) communications. The experiments used three popular cloud apps (Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive), five communication apps (Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, Skype and Viber), and two email apps (GMail and Microsoft Outlook). The evidential data was collected and analysed using mobile forensics and network packet analyser tools. The correlation of evidence artefacts would support to infer illegal use of mobile devices. This study also highlights the extent of acquired evidence between Android and Windows devices, in which Android presents more evidentiary value.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for providing constructive and generous feedback. Despite their invaluable assistance, any errors remaining in this paper are solely attributed to the authors. This paper is an extended conference version [35], with more than 50% new content.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Technology & Mathematical Sciences, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia

    Niken Dwi Wahyu Cahyani, Nurul Hidayah Ab Rahman & Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo

  2. Telkom University, Bandung, Indonesia

    Niken Dwi Wahyu Cahyani

  3. Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Johor, Malaysia

    Nurul Hidayah Ab Rahman

  4. School of Computing, University of South Alabama, Mobile, AL, USA

    William Bradley Glisson

  5. Department of Information Systems and Cyber Security, The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, 78249, TX, USA

    Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo

Authors
  1. Niken Dwi Wahyu Cahyani
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  2. Nurul Hidayah Ab Rahman
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  3. William Bradley Glisson
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  4. Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo.

Appendix A

Appendix A

Fig. 7
figure 7

Example of a Viber’s packet from a Windows device

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Fig. 8
figure 8

Initial inspection

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Fig. 9
figure 9

Manual acquisition

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Cahyani, N.D.W., Rahman, N.H.A., Glisson, W.B. et al. The Role of Mobile Forensics in Terrorism Investigations Involving the Use of Cloud Storage Service and Communication Apps. Mobile Netw Appl 22, 240–254 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11036-016-0791-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11036-016-0791-8

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