Study of Cryptographic Hashing in Mobile Forensics: Overview, Analysis and Challenges

Abstract

Growing use of mobile handheld devices, such as cell phones and PDA does provide productivity benefits but they also pose new security risks. Due to continued growth of processing power and ever evolving ubiquitous functionality of these devices, they are also being used for lots of criminal activities too. This poses great challenges for investigators and law enforcement officials all over the world. The use of mobile phones in criminal activities has led to the need of recovering the data in them. The acquisition of information derived from cellular devices can be used as forensic evidence which has become a prime component of crime scene investigations. Digital evidence, like any other type of evidence, requires identification, collection, a chain of custody, examination/analysis, and finally authentication in court during presentation to the trier of fact. Forensic hashing is used for identification, verification and authentication of data and provide forensic examiner with the ability to verify the integrity of acquired data. This paper focus on use of cryptographic hashing in mobile forensics and discusses the current challenges.