Forensic information acquisition in mobile networks

Acquisition of data stored on mobile network client equipment including 3G devices, Personal Digital Assistants, Pocket PCs running operating systems such as Symbian and Windows Mobile may be required for forensic purposes. Access to such devices across wireless and mobile interfaces raises challenges which do not normally exist when forensic analysis of hard drives and other storage media occurs. Only limited research has been carried out in this area of wireless forensics and this paper discusses the design and proof -of-concept testing of a forensic application tool which runs on a desktop computer and can be used to extract data from mobile devices consistent with forensic analysis used on non-mobile equipment. This paper addresses new ideas in data acquisition over wireless networks irrespective of the underlying reason for the acquisition requirements of such information. This project succeeded in demonstrating the mapping of a mobile device´s internal and external memory and the copying of folders and files from memory to a computer across a mobile interface.