Secure Deletion Framework for Smart Devices

Abstract

With the exponential use of smart phones, an enormous advancement in smart phone camera technology and image magnification applications has been observed. However, this causes intense privacy concerns with the smart phones. It is because the criminals often recover deleted data from the sold or lost smart phones. Moreover, they blackmail the recovered data owners. Such recovery becomes possible due to the presence of forensic mechanisms. This thesis has developed a toolkit in the form of Android application for deleting the data permanently. The data can be of various formats which include .jpeg, .doc, ,m4a, .pdf, .png, and .mp4. The application successfully works on all Android versions currently available in the market. The application is developed on the basis of analysis, of famous Android deletion applications, carried out to effectively evaluate their deletion extent. Furthermore, their compliance against NIST 800-88 standard has been checked. The validation of the toolkit has been done by deleting the data and recovering it via Autopsy. Since the data was deleted securely, therefore, Autopsy could not recover it.