A Cloud-Focused Mobile Forensics Methodology

The ubiquity of the smartphone means that there is a high probability that a suspect under investigation uses one. Because of society's growing dependence on smartphones, such devices will likely contain a wealth of incriminating data such as emails, text messages, phone logs, and sensitive documents. Furthermore, with the prevalence of cloud-based storage, it is also possible that the evidential data that forensic investigators seek would not be located directly on the device. Thus, there is a need for a forensically sound and specialized methodology to access this remote data, which might be critical in a forensic investigation. This column describes one such methodology.