Popular iPhone and iOS Forensic Tools
With the ever increasing popularity of the Apple iPhone and iOS devices, there are a growing number of tools that specifically address the needs of security professionals.
Even free tools now allow an end user to explore data, perform data recovery and run security tests and audit reports.
It’s important that as a security or IT professional that you understand how these tools work so you can better safeguard business data and educate your users if you’re responsible for managing a large number of iPhones (or other iOS devices).
Below are a few of the more popular iPhone and iOS forensic tools. Most of these tools are very easy to use and even end users can analyze collected data and generate detailed audit reports that can be used for either data recovery, security auditing or for legal purposes.
Oxygen-forensic suite
This is one of the most popular mobile forensic suite and is widely used because of its rich feature set. Some of the features of Oxygen-forensic are: recovering phone basic info, multimedia messages, contact lists, call logs, web browser cache, email recovery and geographical coordinates. Besides iPhone and iOS devices, it supports other mobile platforms such Symbian OS, Android, Windows Mobile and RIM BlackBerry devices.
More information: http://www.oxygen-forensic.com/en/
iXAM
iXAM (ig’zam) deals with non-invasive data recovery from various iPhone models as types like 2G, 3G, 3GS and 4 plus iPod Touch. It creates a full image of the iPhone that needs to be analyzed, this created image can then be stored for future references. An audit report is created by iXAM that outlines the whole recovery process as well as documenting audits of various iPhone system components.
More information: http://www.ixam-forensics.com
Lantern
Lantern is a newer iPhone forensics solution developed by Katana Forensics. It creates a physical RAW dd and .dmg image files of all iOS Devices (iPhones as well as iPads and iPods). It is possible to start inspecting data while Lantern is processing any iOS device which makes it very useful to process large number of devices. Mapping of geographical co-ordinates as well as timeline analysis make this tool very powerful and comprehensive. It also has additional support for third party installed applications.
More information: http://katanaforensics.com/forensics/lantern-v2-0/
iPhone Analyzer
This is a handy iPhone forensics tool that can do most of the basic tasks like backing up files, examining different files types as well as the internal structure of iPhone. It is free to download and use and it’s also open source which gets a thumbs up from us!
More information: http://sourceforge.net/projects/iphoneanalyzer/
Summary
There are many more iPhone and iOS tools on the market since we first created this site and we’re sure there will be many more new tools appearing in the future. These tools are only a sample of what’s out there, but it’s more than enough to get you started with exploring your iPhone and iOS devices.
May 7th, 2011 - Posted in Opinions, Story | | 0 Comments
Taking Screenshots with your iPhone
If you want to capture an error message or just a plain screenshot, iPhoneMad.com has a tip that tells you how to capture a screenshot using a built-in iPhone feature.
You can read the article here:
http://iphonemad.com/taking-a-screenshot-with-your-iphone/
July 25th, 2008 - Posted in News | | 0 Comments
iPhone Forensics Book Rough Cut
O’Reilly’s have just released a “Rough Cut” version on their upcoming “iPhone Forensics” book. Looking at the TOC, it looks very cool. I’ve only just started reading it myself, but already I can clearly tell that if you have an interest in security, you will love this.
iPhone Forensics gives IT professionals, security personnel, and law enforcement the knowledge needed to conduct forensic analysis of an iPhone. This book shows the reader how to recover sensitive information from the device and perform disaster recovery, and walks the reader through various scenarios for recovering different types of information. With this guide, the reader will be able to effectively recover live, lost, or deleted email, photos, voicemail, Google Maps searches, typing cache, and other sensitive data retained by the iPhone. The reader will learn advanced techniques including data recovery, properly preserving and preparing evidence, and technical techniques such as bypassing basic passcode security or recovering data even after a full restore (by say, a disgruntled employee). Finally, the reader will learn how to properly wipe an iPhone clean of all data for resale or reissue - something Apple’s own restore process fails to do.
You can order the book yourself online here.
July 25th, 2008 - Posted in News | | 0 Comments
First Anti Virus Application for iPhone
A recent article from Hack In The Box talks about the first anti virus application for the iPhone, although technically it resides on an OS X desktop.
The application, called Virus Barrier has been developed by a French company called Intego.
July 21st, 2008 - Posted in Malware | | 0 Comments
Useful iPhone Security Settings and Information
Xeno Kovah has published a little gem of a collection of iPhone security tidbits.
For example, one of the questions is “what is the NMAP output?”.
Nmap output?:
Nothing. The iPhone is not running any services listening on any TCP ports, and silently drops all unrequested packets.
Other questions include Bluetooth capability, Safari options, network fingerprint and other goodies.
Props go out to Xeno!
Read the full thing here: http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~xsk/iPhoneSecuritySettings.html.
July 4th, 2008 - Posted in Story | | 0 Comments
iPhone in the Corporate Environment
Builder AU have posted an interesting article titled “The boss’s iPhone: Your worst security nightmare” which talks about the popularity of the iPhone making it a juicy target, and the implications of iPhone’s being used in a corporate environment.
As employee-owned portable devices become more sophisticated they become less secure, according to one analyst — and the more senior an employee, the less compliant they are when it comes to protecting the information on those devices.
You can read the article here: http://www.builderau.com.au/news/soa/The-boss-s-iPhone-Your-worst-security-nightmare/0,339028227,339284001,00.htm.
July 4th, 2008 - Posted in Story | | 0 Comments
Robert Vamosi on iPhone Security
Robert Vamosi has written a piece on the pros and cons of iPhone security.
The iPhone is likely to be one of the most complex smart phones that we’ve seen to date. As such, it will be challenging to have to a completely secure code base.
You can read the article here.
It was written a while back now, but interesting reading withstanding.
June 22nd, 2008 - Posted in Opinions | | 0 Comments
Thoughts on iPhone Security from TUAW
The Unofficial Apple Weblog has a post on iPhone security that has some interesting comments. To summarise the article, with great power comes great responsibility.
http://www.tuaw.com/2008/02/11/thoughts-on-iphone-security/
It’s well worth reading the comments.
June 22nd, 2008 - Posted in Opinions | | 0 Comments
