Google’s
Android is one of the most popular mobile operating systems (OS)
currently released. There are a lot of devices out there running this
OS so the likely hood of encountering one during an investigation is
high so it is important to understand how it works.
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| http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Navstar-2F.jpg |
One of the features common across most,
if not all, Android devices are Global Positioning System Receivers
(GPS). This powerful system allows users to pinpoint their location
with high degrees of accuracy. Due to its prevalence across devices,
use of GPS is heavily baked into the OS and is used for everything
from retrieving local weather data to embedding location coordinates
into photos taken with the devices camera.
GPS data can be highly relevant in
forensic investigations. Being able to prove that a device was at a
specific location at a specific date and time could be the smoking
gun in an investigation.
For my Senior Capstone project I am
going to look into GPS data on an Android smartphone generated by
specific applications. I plan on being able to generate a table of
popular Android applications that show:
- What causes the application to generate GPS data
- Where on the device this data is stored
- How, if necessary, to parse this data into a readable format
So far I plan on looking into the small
number of applications listed below and expanding upon this list as I
go.
- Google Maps Navigation
- Facebook / Facebook Messenger
- Twitter
- Foursquare
- Evernote
Feel free to leave comments with any ideas
or suggestions and be sure to follow this blog for updates on my
progress over the next 10 weeks!
