Forensic Analysis of Content Hiding Android Applications

Abstract

Abstract-In this era of smartphones and with the availability of sophisticated anti-forensic applications, it is a big challenge for forensic investigators to retrieve information hidden using anti-forensic techniques. This paper discusses forensic analysis of content hiding android applications. The work mentioned in this paper is carried out to retrieve maximum information related to how these applications store data, whether they encrypt the data or not, how the credentials and patterns are preserved, etc. Outcome of this work will help forensic investigators in handling content hiding android applications, which if not investigated may hide lots of crucial information. It is not only android that changed the whole world, but advancement in high speed Internet has also played equal role. As per the statistics from internetlivestats [3], the number of Internet users has crossed over 3 billion in 2014 compared to less than one billion in 2005. In early days when there was less access to Internet, people where using mobile phones mainly for voice communication and messaging. But as both the technologies -smartphones and speed and accessibility of Internet -grew together, they opened a whole new world of smartphones and gadgets which allows them to connect to anything from anywhere at anytime. Keywords-Android ApplicationsHowever, even if you have mobile device and high speed Internet, you cannot do much until and unless you get interface to do your tasks, this is the reason the main contributors in this domain are application developers.The developers from all over the world have developed and are still developing variety of applications, ranging from games, utilities, financial apps, wallets and much more. Openness of android and ease of publishing apps to the Google play store has made it possible for developers to develop and publish unlimited apps for android users. As per the statistics published by statista [4], Google Play Store was most recently placed at 2.8 million apps in March 2017. This figure shows how versatile the application market is.As being an open platform, Google play store hosts applications for various purposes. Though, majority of applications are designed to assist end users in their routine work, many of them are developed with other intentions. One such purpose is to allow users to maintain their privacy. There are hundreds of applications which allow users to hide their contents including multimedia files, messages, and much more. These applications in general, also support locking access to applications.These content hiding applications are mostly aimed to provide privacy to the end users, but this may not be case in all conditions. If we look at the other side of privacy, then the hidden content by the end user may restrict forensic investigation process, especially when such phone was used by a victim or the suspect. This paper emphasizes on forensic analysis of such content hiding applications to assist forensic investigators in solving a crime. Following sections of the paper di...