WhatsApp is the fastest growing instant messenger app. With over 2 billion monthly users, WhatsApp keeps the crown of the most popular instant messaging tool in the Western hemisphere. The recent introduction of end-to-end encrypted backups and the change of Google’s authentication protocol broke things temporarily for EXWA users, but now everything is back to normal. Learn how Elcomsoft Explorer for WhatsApp can download and decrypt encrypted WhatsApp communication histories from Google Drive and Apple iCloud!

iMessage, Hangouts, Skype, Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp are familiar, while PalTalk, Pigin, Psi Jabber client, Gadu-Gadu, Gajim, Trillian, BigAnt or Brosix are relatively little known. The tools from the first group are not only more popular but infinitely more secure compared to the tools from the second group. In this publication we’ll review the authentication methods used by the various instant messengers, and attempt to extract a password to the user’s account.

Instant messaging apps have become the de-facto standard of real-time, text-based communications. The acquisition of instant messaging chats and communication histories can be extremely important for an investigation. In this article, we compare the five top instant messaging apps for iOS in the context of their forensic analysis.

WhatsApp remains one of the most popular instant messengers. With more than 1.5 billion users and about half billion daily active users, WhatsApp sends over 100 billion messages per day. WhatsApp is secure thanks to end-to-end encryption to make intercepted messages impossible to decrypt. While this is great news to consumers and privacy advocates, it is also bad news for the law enforcement. Once an expert accepts to access the suspect’s WhatsApp communication history, they will struggle with the encryption and demand for a vendor-provided backdoor (WhatsApp: The Bad Guys’ Secret Weapon).

Starting with version 2.40, Elcomsoft Extractor for WhatsApp supports physical and cloud acquisition of WhatsApp Business. The physical extraction method requires root access, while cloud acquisition requires authenticating into the user’s Google Drive account with proper authentication credential. In addition, a verification code received from WhatsApp as an SMS must be provided to decrypt the backup downloaded from Google Drive. In this guide, we’ll describe all the steps required to perform physical and cloud acquisition of WhatsApp Business. (more…)

With over 1.3 billion monthly users, WhatsApp is the most popular instant messaging tool worldwide, and Android is the most popular mobile operating system by far. This makes WhatsApp acquisition from Android devices essential for the law enforcement. Elcomsoft Explorer for WhatsApp 2.30 can now download and decrypt Android user’s encrypted WhatsApp communication histories stored in Google Drive. If you have access to the user’s trusted phone number or their physical SIM card (to receive a verification code from WhatsApp), you can now use Elcomsoft Explorer for WhatsApp to download, decrypt and display WhatsApp communication histories backed up into the user’s Google Account. Surprisingly, a cloud backup may, in certain cases, contain even more information than stored on the device itself. This particularly applies to attachments (photos and videos) sent and received by WhatsApp users and then deleted from the device.

Facebook-owned WhatsApp is the most popular instant messaging tool worldwide. Due to its point-to-point encryption, WhatsApp is an extremely tough target to extract.

As you may already know, we’ve added Android support to our WhatsApp acquisition tool, Elcomsoft Explorer for WhatsApp. While the updated tool can now extract WhatsApp communication histories directly from Android smartphones with or without root access, how do you actually use it, and how does it work? In this blog post we’ll be looking into the technical detail and learn how to use the tool.

We have recently released a brand new product, Elcomsoft Explorer for WhatsApp. Targeted at home users and forensic experts along, this Windows-based, iOS-centric tool offers a bunch of extraction options for WhatsApp databases. Why the new tool, and how is it different from other extraction options offered by Elsomsoft’s mobile forensic tools? Before we move on to that, let’s have a look at the current state of WhatsApp.