It is needless to say that modern criminal investigations involve seizing the smart devices at the crime scene itself. The reason being most smart devices provide critical evidence for the case.
However, as technology is advancing, security and privacy concerns are also growing. This makes the field of forensics more important than ever before.
And data extraction from these smart devices for investigation is becoming an arduous task. For this reason, multiple forensic tools are being developed for data extraction from cellular devices.
These tools help several government agencies and legal bodies to solve critical cases and ensure public safety. Want to know what these tools are? Jump ahead and fetch yourself with all the answers.
Manual extraction
This is the technique that allows the investigators to extract the data with the help of a touchscreen or keypad. Afterward, the data is documented photographically. This technique is time-consuming and has greater odds of human error.
But still, there are some tools that have been developed to make manual extraction easy. These tools capture the things shown on the device, which are then digitally captured for future reference.
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Micro read
Through this process, the examiners interpret the information on the memory chips. This method uses a high-powered electron microscope.
With this microscope, physical gates are analyzed on the chips, and afterward, these gate levels are converted into zeroes and ones to match with the American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
Logical extraction
In this method, the forensic experts connect the cellular device to a forensic workstation via Bluetooth. Bluetooth workstation sends commands to the smartphone.
Consequently, the user data is gathered from the memory of the mobile and sent back to the forensic workstation for further scrutiny. The investigator may also use mobile device forensics tools to decode this useful data. Therefore, logical extraction is no wonder a very practical and useful technique.
Chip-off
The next technique on the list is chip-off. This method gives a chance to the investigators to retrieve information directly from the cellular device’s flash memory. The examiners take out the memory chip of the smartphone and create a binary image of it.
The matter of fact is that this is an expensive process and demands much expertise over hardware. Hence, its improper handling may also lead to physical damage of the chip, and sometimes it becomes a herculean task to extract the data.
Hex dump
Also known as physical extraction, the hex dump method looks forward to extracting the raw image in binary format. The expert in forensic tools connects the device to the forensic workstation.
The boot loader is then pushed into the device and instructed to dump the memory to the PC. This method is cost-friendly and provides more valuable information to the examiners, which includes the recovery of the removed files.
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To sum it all up
Talking about selecting the most suitable method, there are many aspects that you should keep in mind.
For instance – the time you have for carrying out the process, what information you have to extract – volatile data or previously deleted information. So, select the best method as per your needs and get the maximum inputs in less time.
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