Computer Engineering Commons^™

Network And Device Forensic Analysis Of Android Social-Messaging Applications, Daniel Walnycky, Ibrahim Baggili, Andrew Marrington, Jason Moore, Frank Breitinger

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

In this research we forensically acquire and analyze the device-stored data and network traffic of 20 popular instant messaging applications for Android. We were able to reconstruct some or the entire message content from 16 of the 20 applications tested, which reflects poorly on the security and privacy measures employed by these applications but may be construed positively for evidence collection purposes by digital forensic practitioners. This work shows which features of these instant messaging applications leave evidentiary traces allowing for suspect data to be reconstructed or partially reconstructed, and whether network forensics or device forensics permits the reconstruction of …