New flash memory acquisition methods based on firmware update protocols for LG Android smartphones

Abstract

Since criminals are committing offenses using smartphones in many cases, smartphone forensic techniques are being considered important by criminal investigators. In this paper, we present a new methodology to analyze firmware update protocols using fuzz testing. This approach has enabled us to find five new methods to acquire data evidence from LG Android smartphones, released from 2011 to 2016. We conducted extensive experiments to obtain data evidence for 48 LG smartphone models (100 devices in total). Furthermore, we deal with diverse digital forensic issues such as integrity of evidence or decompression/decryption of data using our methods.