Forensic Analysis of Wearable Devices: Fitbit, Garmin and HETP Watches

Abstract

Wearable technology has been on an exponential rise and shows no signs of slowing down. One category of wearable technology is Fitness bands, which have the potential to show a user's activity levels and location data. Such information stored in fitness bands is just the beginning of a long trail of evidence fitness bands can store, which represents a huge opportunity to digital forensic practitioners. On the surface of recent work and research in this area, there does not appear to be any similar work that has already taken place on fitness bands and particularly, the devices in this study, a Garmin Forerunner 110, a Fitbit Charge HR and a Generic low-cost HETP fitness tracker. In this paper, we present our analysis of these devices for any possible digital evidence in a forensically sound manner, identifying files of interest and location data on the device. Data accuracy and validity of the evidence is shown, as a test run scenario wearing all of the devices allowed for data comparison analysis.

Forensic analysis of IoT ecosystem

“…The scientific literature is rich in works on the study of connected objects and their artefacts, whether they are wearable devices [2]- [5] or voice assistants [6]- [8] and more globally any connected device of daily life [9]- [11]. These devices are characterized by their own data formats, protocols and physical interfaces [12].…”

“…This kit is located in the room 1 and on two exterior openings. This infrastructure communicates via ZigBee to a dedicated hub (5), located in the room 3. The home automation system is also made of Philips brand connected bulbs (6 and 7) with its dedicated hub (8).…”

Data Privacy in Wearable IoT Devices: Anonymization and Deanonymization

“…In [4], an investigation method was conducted on three devices: Fitbit, Garmin, and HETP watches, all of which are popular low-cost devices.…”

Forensic Investigation of Google Assistant

“…IoT forensics has been widely studied in recent literature [2,[10][11][12][13][14][15]. There has also been recent literature and studies that have focused on recovering forensic artifacts of interests from virtual assistant enabled devices and their companion devices.…”