Form Factors of Smart Devices and Other Wireless Technologies

Don't mistake the compact size of a modern-day smartphone or mobile device such as a tablet for limitations in its power and capability. These devices have powerful processors, sufficient RAM, and storage that may be both internal and external, such as an SD (secure digital) card.

These devices are also multihomed in that they separately or simultaneously communicate over the cellular network and a typical home or office network. Employees may now come to the office with private internet access in their pocket, with little or no control via the information security team.

Smart device with variety of apps on screen

Source: Jason Howie, Flickr

As these devices pass between wireless network access points and cellular network nodes, they intelligently connect and disconnect, often without the need for user action. They are also constantly listening for known and unknown wireless networks. In addition, these devices will continually probe their preferred network list (PNL) for previously connected wireless networks and, when found, connect to the strongest signal.

What vulnerabilities are presented by this technology? What unique challenge does this present to the forensic examiner in terms of education requirements and evidence handling and location?

The resources below provide insight on the mobile devices themselves as well as their networks.

References

Ayers, R., Brothers, S., & Jansen, W. (2014). Guidelines on mobile device forensics: NIST Special Publication 800-101, Revision 1. National Institute of Standards and Technology. http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-101r1.pdf

Check Your Knowledge

Choose the best answer to each question:
Question 1
GSM and CDMA are the two most prevalent digital cellular networks. What does the acronym CDMA stand for?
Question 2
GSM and CDMA are the two most prevalent digital cellular networks. What does the acronym GSM stand for?
Question 3
CDMA was designed in the United States and GSM was designed in Europe.
True
False

Licenses and Attributions

Smartphone Shopping Apps by Jason Howie on Flickr is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. UMGC has modified this work and it is available under the original license.