Authors:
Jennifer Bellizzi
1
;
Mark Vella
1
;
Christian Colombo
1
and
Julio Hernandez-Castro
2
Affiliations:
1
Department of Computer Science, University of Malta, Msida, Malta
;
2
School of Computing, Cornwallis South, University of Kent, Canterbury, U.K.
Keyword(s):
Memory Forensics, Android Security, Digital Forensics, Incident Response, Forensic Timelines.
Abstract:
Digital investigations of stealthy attacks on Android devices pose particular challenges to incident responders. Whereas consequential late detection demands accurate and comprehensive forensic timelines to reconstruct all malicious activities, reduced forensic footprints with minimal malware involvement, such as when Living-Off-the-Land (LOtL) tactics are adopted, leave investigators little evidence to work with. Volatile memory forensics can be an effective approach since app execution of any form is always bound to leave a trail of evidence in memory, even if perhaps ephemeral. Just-In-Time Memory Forensics (JIT-MF) is a recently proposed technique that describes a framework to process memory forensics on existing stock Android devices, without compromising their security by requiring them to be rooted. Within this framework, JIT-MF drivers are designed to promptly dump in-memory evidence related to app usage or misuse. In this work, we primarily introduce a conceptualized present
ation of JIT-MF drivers. Subsequently, through a series of case studies involving the hijacking of widely-used messaging apps, we show that when the target apps are forensically enhanced with JIT-MF drivers, investigators can generate richer forensic timelines to support their investigation, which are on average 26% closer to ground truth.
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