Abstract:
Smartphones since their emergence have become a major part of our lives. Among smartphone operating systems, Android is the popular of all. The Android operating system is currently installed on most of the mobile devices. They are successful due to the increasing availability of mobile applications to answer every possible need. As these applications are now becoming an essential part of the consumer’s life, it is of great importance to ensure security and privacy when handling personal and sensitive information. To secure the data on mobile devices, users use the applications available on Google Play store which help to hide the data on their device known as Hidden Applications. The goal of this research is to identify the privacy threats to which the end-user is exposed while using in-built or third-party hidden applications to hide their personal data from snooping and intrusion, analyse these applications behaviour, working and their code to understand how data is hidden. Based on these analysis and results a computational forensic framework is proposed, which helps the forensic investigators to investigate data thoroughly and detect the hidden applications present on mobile device and data hidden in it too. This framework also focuses on the digital evidence and the reconstruction of data retrieved from android memory through forensic analysis to present in case of forensic investigations, criminal activities and court hearings if needed.
