Using smartphones as a proxy for forensic evidence contained in cloud storage services

Grispos, G., Glisson, W. and Storer, T. (2013) Using smartphones as a proxy for forensic evidence contained in cloud storage services. In: 46th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-46), Grand Wailea, Maui, Hawaii, 7-10 Jan 2013, pp. 4910-4919. (doi: 10.1109/HICSS.2013.592)

Abstract

Cloud storage services such as Dropbox, Box and SugarSync have been embraced by both individuals and organizations. This creates an environment that is potentially conducive to security breaches and malicious activities. The investigation of these cloud environments presents new challenges for the digital forensics community. It is anticipated that smartphone devices will retain data from these storage services. Hence, this research presents a preliminary investigation into the residual artifacts created on an iOS and Android device that has accessed a cloud storage service. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it provides an initial assessment on the extent to which cloud storage data is stored on these client-side devices. This view acts as a proxy for data stored in the cloud. Secondly, it provides documentation on the artifacts that could be useful in a digital forensics investigation of cloud services.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Additional Information: © 2013 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Storer, Dr Tim and Glisson, Dr William
• Authors: Grispos, G., Glisson, W., and Storer, T.
• Subjects: Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA76 Computer software
• College/School: College of Arts > School of Humanities > Information Studies; College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2013 IEEE
• First Published: First published in Proceedings of the 46th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-46), pp. 4910-4919
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher