Forensic Analysis of Third Party Location Applications in Android and iOS
This work addresses forensic investigators' need for evidence from location apps, but it is incremental as it applies standard methods to new apps.
The paper analyzed two popular third-party location sharing apps on iOS and Android to find forensic artifacts stored locally on smartphones, discovering data that could assist investigations by revealing past suspect locations, with security issues also identified.
Location sharing applications are becoming increasingly common. These applications allow users to share their own locations and view contacts' current locations on a map. Location applications are commonly used by friends and family members to view Global Positioning System (GPS) location of an individual, but valuable forensic evidence may exist in this data when stored locally on smartphones. This paper aims to discover forensic artifacts from two popular third-party location sharing applications on iOS and Android devices. Industry standard mobile forensic suites are utilized to discover if any locally stored data could be used to assist investigations reliant on knowing the past location of a suspect. Security issues raised regarding the artifacts found during our analysis is also discussed.