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Mobile Device Data Collection from Global EDD Group

January 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Everyone seems to have a smart phone. These devices store a wide variety of information, some not even apparent to the owner. Our data collection teams are equipped to retrieve data from cell phones and other mobile devices in a forensically sound manner that preserves the evidence, ensuring that it is admissible in court proceedings.

The extent to which we can recover data is heavily based on the cell phone or device model. However, we can extract some useful data from about 95% of all cellular phones on the market today, including smartphones and PDA devices (Palm OS, Microsoft, Blackberry, Symbian, iPhone, and Google Android).

Here are some of the types of information we can gather:

  • Phonebook contacts
  • Phone details: IMEI / ESN and Phone number
  • ICCID and IMSI
  • SIM location information: TMSI, MCC, MNC, LAC
  • Text messages including deleted SMS off SIM / USIM
  • Call logs ( Missed / Dialed / Received including deleted call histories off SIM / USIM )
  • Pictures
  • Videos
  • Audio files
  • Ringtones
  • Geo tagging pictures and mapping through Google Earth
  • Password Extraction
  • Bypass SIM Locked phones (carrier lock) when original SIM is not available.
  • Unicode Extraction for Multiple Languages
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Old Smartphones Leave Tons Of Data For Digital Dumpster Divers – Dark Reading (Ericka Chickowski)

December 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A recent exploration made by a digital forensics company into a handful of phones found in the smartphone secondary market showed how easy it is to glean information from old or lost phones, even if a factory reset has been committed. Today an expert from Access Data gave Dark Reading the skinny on his findings from his informal research and explained some of the repercussions for both corporations and consumers who don’t pick, manage, or dispose of their phones wisely.

“I buy a lot of recycled phones and there is tons of data still on them,” says Lee Reiber, director of mobile forensics for AccessData, “I’d guess if you went and grabbed ten phones [from recycling companies], 60 percent of those are going to contain data still.”

Reiber says that at the behest of a customer interested in the data lingering on phones sold by used phone resellers and consumers using Craigslist and eBay, he used AccessData’s tools to do an in-depth forensics dive into five handsets acquired from this secondary market. The phones were the iPhone 3G, Sanyo 2300, HTC Wildfire, LG Optimus, and HTC Hero. Of those five, the iPhone and the old Sanyo had not been reset and contained what Reiber called logical data, things like active account sign-ons, contacts, and calendar information easily usable by any person who turns on the phone.

via Old Smartphones Leave Tons Of Data For Digital Dumpster Divers – Dark Reading.

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Carrier IQ Defends Itself, Releases 19-page Report | ITProPortal.com

December 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

In an attempt to put to rest the controversy surrounding its mobile tracker technology, Carrier IQ has published a 19-page report detailing exactly what its software does and how it is used by mobile phone carriers.

In the document [PDF], Carrier IQ admits that its software, called IQ Agent is installed on more than 150 million mobile phones worldwide. The company claimed that it is merely a diagnostic tool used by mobile phone carriers to provide better services to their customers.

Carrier IQ said that it worked alongside security researcher Trevor Eckhart to zero-in on the issues cited on his report. Eckhart had released an explosive report late last month in which he claimed that Carrier IQ’s software was in fact a key logger among many other things.

via Carrier IQ Defends Itself, Releases 19-page Report | ITProPortal.com.

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E-Discovery: What Businesses Should Know | The Small Business Authority

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Remember the Enron email scandal? As part of a federal investigation into the fraudulent activities going on at Enron in the early part of this century, hundreds of emails were released to the court and eventually to the public. ABC News1 reported that many of these emails “could prove to be embarrassing,” not only for Enron but also for employees whose names were attached to the personal emails they’d sent that were now being revealed to the world. The gathering of these emails was an example of e-discovery, a trend that companies and individuals will continue to face as part of the digital era.

What is E-Discovery?

E-discovery is a broad term used to describe any situation in which electronic data, such as email or internet postings, are sought in a criminal or civil case. The discovery process allows plaintiffs and defendants to exchange information during pretrial preparation, and the court will actually compel information to be turned over if it’s relevant or “probative” to the case.

In days past, discovery was limited to phone records, paper documents, and the like, since those were all that existed. Records were available only of the things people had chosen to write down, and the extensive amounts of paperwork turned over in cases were cumbersome to go through.

Today, however, e-discovery is changing the game. According to figures compiled in a recent Law.com2 article, Twitter users send more than 200 million status updates every day, and people on the internet send 13,800,000 messages every single hour. All these tweets and emails and instant messages and Facebook posts and chats that are flying around cyberspace create a written record of things that might otherwise have been discussed over the phone or in person. Because the records are digital, all of the data and information are stored somewhere and rarely eliminated, no matter how hard you try to get rid of the data. Further, the digital format makes it easy to sort through data quickly to find relevant information.

These online communications are generally not privileged except in certain unusual and limited circumstances. This means that all of these records can be accessed as part of e-discovery, and they can have a significant impact on litigation by providing evidence of things that otherwise might have been unprovable. For example, according to USA Today,3 the twins who sued Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg argued that evidence existed in instant messages that would prove that Zuckerberg had stolen the idea for Facebook from their own website plan. Although a judge dismissed the twins’ suits, it’s easy to imagine a case in which a message sent and forgotten many years ago could be uncovered and used in litigation.

via E-Discovery: What Businesses Should Know | The Small Business Authority | Small Business Services and Small Business Solutions.

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PhoneFactor Delivers IOS App for Authentication | PCWorld

December 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment

PhoneFactor, an authentication system that uses mobile phones as a second factor for improved security, is now available as an app for Apple’s iPhone and iPad.

When users log in to an enterprise application or perform an online transaction on a PC, PhoneFactor requires them to respond to a prompt sent to their mobile phone. The system has already been available with voice calls or text messages for the prompt, and now it can be used with a native app on the phone. The version for iOS 4 and iOS 5 is available now, and an Android version is coming soon, according to the company.

PhoneFactor is designed to take the place of a traditional two-factor authentication system, such as the SecurID hardware tokens sold by RSA, which display one-time passwords for users to enter on the PC. Because people can use their cell phones instead of a dedicated device, PhoneFactor is less expensive and easier to deploy and manage, according to Sarah Fender, PhoneFactor’s vice president of marketing and product management. A PhoneFactor software license typically costs enterprises between US$10 and $25 per user, per year, she said. The iOS app to use with it is free.

via PhoneFactor Delivers IOS App for Authentication | PCWorld Business Center.

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Phone ‘Rootkit’ Maker Carrier IQ May Have Violated Wiretap Law In Millions Of Cases – Forbes

December 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

“If CarrierIQ has gotten the handset manufactures to install secret software that records keystrokes intended for text messaging and the Internet and are sending some of that information back somewhere, this is very likely a federal wiretap.” he says. “And that gives the people wiretapped the right to sue and provides for significant monetary damages.”

As Eckhart’s analysis of the company’s training videos and the debugging logs on his own HTC Evo handset have shown, Carrier IQ captures every keystroke on a device as well as location and other data, and potentially makes that data available to Carrier IQ’s customers. The video he’s created (below) shows every keystroke being sent to the highly-obscured application on the phone before a call, text message, or Internet data packet is ever communicated beyond the phone. Eckhart has found the application on Samsung, HTC, Nokia and RIM devices, and Carrier IQ claims on its website that it has installed the program on more than 140 million handsets.

Specifically, Ohm points to changes made to the Wiretap Act under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 that forbid acquiring the contents of communications without the users’ consent. “Because this happens with text messages as they’re being sent, a quintessentially streaming form of communication, it seems like exactly the kind of thing the wiretap act is meant to prevent,” he says.  ”When I was at the Justice Department, we definitely prosecuted people for installing software with these kinds of capabilities on personal computers.”

via Phone ‘Rootkit’ Maker Carrier IQ May Have Violated Wiretap Law In Millions Of Cases – Forbes.

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Senator Seeks Answers About Phone Logging Software | NPR

December 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Yesterday, we reported about the tempest brewing about Carrier IQ, a secret software a researcher says has been installed on millions of phones and is capable of logging websites a user visits, the contents of voice and text messages and even the content of online searches.

Today Sen. Al Franken, a Democrat for Minnesotta, sent a letter to the company asking for a detailed explanation of the kind of information the company’s software logs.

“The revelation that the locations and other sensitive data of millions of Americans are being secretly recorded and possibly transmitted is deeply troubling,” Franken said in a statement. “This news underscores the need for Congress to act swiftly to protect the location information and private, sensitive information of consumers. But right now, Carrier IQ has a lot of questions to answer.”

As we said yesterday, Carrier IQ denies that its software is used to snoop. Instead, the company says, it is used to diagnose problems.

Today, Forbes picks up the story and adds that the company, as well as the telephone carriers that allowed the software on their customer’s phones could be facing a costly class action lawsuit, because of the possibility that the software violates federal wiretap laws.

via Senator Seeks Answers About Phone Logging Software : The Two-Way : NPR.

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Video: Your Android Phone Is Secretly Recording Everything You Do

November 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

 

If you have any decently modern Android phone, everything you do is being recorded by hidden software lurking inside. It even circumvents web encryption and grabs everything—including your passwords and Google queries.

Worse: it’s the handset manufacturers and the carriers who—in the name of “making your user experience better”—install this software without any way for you to opt-out. This video, recorded by 25-year-old Android developer Trevor Eckhart, shows how it works. This is bad. Really bad.

Fast forward to 9:00 for the damning sequence.

The spying software is developed by a company called Carrier IQ. In their site, the company says they are “the only embedded analytics company to support millions of devices simultaneously, we give Wireless Carriers and Handset Manufacturers unprecedented insight into their customers’ mobile experience.”

It seems like a good goal and, indeed, most manufacturers and carriers agree: according to Eckhart, the spyware is included in most Android phones out there. Carrier IQ software is also included in Blackberry and Nokia smartphones, so it probably works exactly the same in those smartphones as well. It doesn’t even matter if your telephone was purchased free of carrier contracts. As Eckhart shows in this video, it’s always there.

The problem is that it does a lot more than log anonymous generic data. It grabs everything.

Read More: http://gizmodo.com/5863849/your-android-phone-is-secretly-recording-everything-you-do

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Microsoft: We’ve Had Siri-Like Tech for More Than a Year | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

November 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Is Microsoft jealous of Siri? No, according to chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie, because Microsoft has had its own version of Siri available for over a year.

In an interview with Forbes tech writer Eric Savitz (below), Mundie said Siri probably got so much press because “people are infatuated with Apple.”

Apple is blessed with “good marketing,” but “you could argue that Microsoft has had a similar capability in Windows phones for more than a year, since Windows Phone 7 was introduced,” Mundie said.

Microsoft acquired TellMe in early 2007 and the company announced its first app for Windows Mobile in April 2009—a downloadable program that let users dictate text messages, dial phone numbers, or search the Internet by voice.

In August 2010, Microsoft Speech general manager Zig Serafi gave PCMag’s Michael Miller a demo of TellMe on a Windows Phone at the SpeechTek 2010 conference.

“You just press and hold the center button on the bottom of the phone, and you can say things like ‘Start Outlook,’” Miller wrote. “You can go into Bing and say things like ‘Find Italian Restaurants near me.’ Or just say the name of an airline and flight, and get the status.”

Microsoft unveiled its Windows Phone 7 lineup in October 2010, and while the mobile OS, particularly the most recent “Mango” update, has been well-received, the smartphones have yet to fly off the shelves, thanks in large part to competition from Android devices and Apple’s iPhone.

Mundie conceded that “we probably could learn something on the marketing side.” But, he continued, Apple didn’t really have much to offer with the new iPhone, hence the focus on the Siri.

via Microsoft: We’ve Had Siri-Like Tech for More Than a Year | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.

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Microsoft: We’ve Had Siri-Like Tech for More Than a Year | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

November 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Is Microsoft jealous of Siri? No, according to chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie, because Microsoft has had its own version of Siri available for over a year.

In an interview with Forbes tech writer Eric Savitz (below), Mundie said Siri probably got so much press because “people are infatuated with Apple.”

Apple is blessed with “good marketing,” but “you could argue that Microsoft has had a similar capability in Windows phones for more than a year, since Windows Phone 7 was introduced,” Mundie said.

Microsoft acquired TellMe in early 2007 and the company announced its first app for Windows Mobile in April 2009—a downloadable program that let users dictate text messages, dial phone numbers, or search the Internet by voice.

In August 2010, Microsoft Speech general manager Zig Serafi gave PCMag’s Michael Miller a demo of TellMe on a Windows Phone at the SpeechTek 2010 conference.

“You just press and hold the center button on the bottom of the phone, and you can say things like ‘Start Outlook,’” Miller wrote. “You can go into Bing and say things like ‘Find Italian Restaurants near me.’ Or just say the name of an airline and flight, and get the status.”

Microsoft unveiled its Windows Phone 7 lineup in October 2010, and while the mobile OS, particularly the most recent “Mango” update, has been well-received, the smartphones have yet to fly off the shelves, thanks in large part to competition from Android devices and Apple’s iPhone.

Mundie conceded that “we probably could learn something on the marketing side.” But, he continued, Apple didn’t really have much to offer with the new iPhone, hence the focus on the Siri.

via Microsoft: We’ve Had Siri-Like Tech for More Than a Year | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.

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