Modern smartphone forensics: Apple iOS: from logical and physical acquisition to iCloud backups, document storage and keychain; encrypted BlackBerry backups (BB 10 and Olympia Service)

March 20, 2014 (at 11:30 a.m.) in Defense & Management

Apple iCloud Backups: there are various methods to perform data acquisition from iOS devices: logical, advanced logical (using hidden services running in iOS and physica. iCloud analysis is the further step. The iCloud may contain complete device backups (for all devices connected to Apple ID), geolocation data (Find My Phone data), documents, and additional data saved by 3rd party applications. We show how (and where) this data is actually stored, how to request and decrypt it, and how to analyse it. Some information on iCloud keychain is also provided — and yes, sometime there is a way to get all your passwords (including ones from the other devices) and credit card data. And yes, most data is available to Apple itself, as well as to Amazon and Microsoft, so probably to three-letter agencies as well. BlackBerry: For BB 10 devices, backups created with BlackBerry Link are always encrypted, but the encryption is not user-configurable, and there is no way to view the backup contents or even restore from thgs backup to the other device. We have found that encryption keys is being generated by BlackBerry ‘Olympia Service’, based on BlackBerry ID, password, and device PIN. ID and PIN is something we can get from the backup itself, and if we know the password as well, we can generate the series of requests to Olympia service to obtain the key and decrypt the backup. Backlup contains all applications (purchased from AppWorld), their data (such as WhatsApp conversations), device settings, call logs, passwords etc — most in the plain form or SQLite databases.

Vladimir Katalov

Vladimir Katalov is CEO, co-founder and co-owner of ElcomSoft Co.Ltd. Born in 1969 in Moscow, Russia; studied Applied Mathematics at National Research Nuclear University. Vladimir works at ElcomSoft up until now from the very beginning (1990). Now he is driving all the R&D processes inside the company.