Investigating social networking applications on smartphones detecting Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ artefacts on android and iOS platforms

Dezfouli, FN; Dehghantanha, A; Eterovic-Soric, B; Choo, KKR

Abstract

The rapid growth in usage and application of Social Networking (SN) platforms make them a potential target by cyber criminals to conduct malicious activities such as identity theft, piracy, illegal trading, sexual harassment, cyber stalking and cyber terrorism. Many SN platforms are extending their services to mobile platforms, making them an important source of evidence in cyber investigation cases. Therefore, understanding the types of potential evidence of users’ SN activities available on mobile devices is crucial to forensic investigation and research. In this paper, we examine four popular SN applications: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+, on Android and iOS platforms, to detect remnants of users’ activities that are of forensic interest. We detect a variety of artefacts (e.g. usernames, passwords, login information, personal information, uploaded posts, exchanged messages and uploaded comments from SN applications) that could facilitate a criminal investigation.

Citation

Dezfouli, F., Dehghantanha, A., Eterovic-Soric, B., & Choo, K. (2016). Investigating social networking applications on smartphones detecting Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ artefacts on android and iOS platforms. Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences, 48(4), 469-488. https://doi.org/10.1080/00450618.2015.1066854

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 16, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Aug 7, 2015
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2016
• Deposit Date: Aug 18, 2015
• Journal: Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences
• Print ISSN: 0045-0618
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 48
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 469-488
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00450618.2015.1066854
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00450618.2015.1066854
• Related Public URLs: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tajf20#.VdNv1ahdUuc