Challenges of acquiring mobile devices while minimizing the loss of usable forensics data

Abstract

The move from computers to mobile devices has placed forensic professionals in a tough spot when performing analysis of seized hardware. Forensics specialists must contend with hardware that is designed to be secure as it is highly mobile, is capable of receiving commands from a suspect after it has been seized which could include commands that are capable of destroying evidence remotely, obsolescence of certain forensics methods such as deleted file recovery from block storage while having to purchase expensive software and hardware packages to extract any usable data.