In the ever-evolving landscape of digital investigations, mobile forensics has become a critical aspect of law enforcement work. The challenges of extracting, handling, and analyzing data obtained from various sources have led to a growing demand for universal solutions. We’d like to emphasize the importance of every stage of mobile forensics, the significance of extraction, and the critical importance of expertise in this field.

In the digital age, where information is a precious commodity and evidence is increasingly stored in virtual realms, the importance of preserving digital evidence has become a must in modern investigative practices. However, the criticality of proper handling is often overlooked, potentially jeopardizing access to crucial data during an investigation. In this article, we will once again highlight the importance of meticulous preservation techniques and live session analysis to prevent the loss of digital evidence.

Year after year, the field of digital forensics and incident response (DFIR) presents us with new challenges. Various vendors from around the world are tirelessly striving to simplify and enhance the work of experts in this field, but there are some things you probably do not know about (or simply never paid attention to) that we discussed in the first part of these series. Today we’ll discuss some real cases to shed light onto some vendors’ shady practices.

The market of digital forensic tools is a tight one, just like any other niche market. The number of vendors is limited, especially when catering such specific needs as unlocking suspects’ handheld devices or breaking encryption. However, amidst the promises of cutting-edge technology and groundbreaking solutions, there are certain limitations that forensic vendors often don’t like to disclose to their customers. These limitations can have a significant impact on the applicability, effectiveness and reliability of the tools being offered.

A year ago, we analyzed the encryption used in Synology NAS devices. We were somewhat disappointed by the company’s choice to rely on a single encryption layer with multiple functional restrictions and security reservations. Today we are publishing the results of our analysis of data encryption used in QNAP devices. Spoiler: it’s very, very different.

If you are working in the area of digital forensics, you might have wondered about one particular thing in the marketing of many forensic solutions. While most manufacturers are claiming that their tools are easy to use and to learn, those very same manufacturers offer training courses with prices often exceeding the cost of the actual tools. Are these trainings necessary at all if the tools are as easy to use as the marketing claims?