XAMN - the smart analytical tool for phone forensic examiners.

and

XRY KIOSK - the power of XRY combined with simplicity of use.

XAMN will be released first in the coming weeks and will provide an impressive new analytical suite capability for XRY, with the power to review up to 25 XRY files simultaneously, run watch lists, visualize connections, plot timelines and map all available geo-data.

The Kiosk will follow later in the year and is now in beta development stage. Designed for busy office environments, we have taken the core engine of XRY and made it easier to use than ever before, with a touch screen interface for front line users who need to quickly and easily recover mobile data.

Both products will provide increasing flexibility for customers to help them in their quest to recover and make sense of recovered mobile data.

Because it's not just about the data, it’s about the context and the meaning.

The expert explained that he was trained in level one mobile phone forensics and was a member of the Garda Organised Crime Unit in May 2008 but had since retired and moved to New Zealand.

He said that he examined a black and silver Nokia 6300 mobile phone, a Samsung mobile phone and two pre-pay SIM cards from the Meteor and Vodafone networks that were handed to him by investigating gardai.

Mr Gannon told Mr O’Kelly that, using computer software, he was able to retrieve text messages and contact details stored in the Nokia 6300 phone and one text message from the Vodafone SIM card in what is known as an XRY analysis.

For more on this story please visit the original article at
www.independent.ie >>

• A Rhode Island judge recently threw out cellphone evidence that led to a man being charged with the murder of a 6-year-old boy, saying the police needed a search warrant.
• A court in Washington compared text messages to voice mail messages that can be overheard by anyone in a room and are therefore not protected by state privacy laws.
• In Louisiana, a federal appeals court is weighing whether location records stored in smartphones deserve privacy protection, or whether they are “business records” that belong to the phone companies.

“The courts are all over the place,” said Hanni Fakhoury, a criminal lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil liberties group.

“They can’t even agree if there’s a reasonable expectation of privacy in text messages that would trigger Fourth Amendment protection.”

The issue will attract attention on Thursday when a Senate committee considers limited changes to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a 1986 law that regulates how the government can monitor digital communications. Courts have used it to permit warrantless surveillance of certain kinds of cellphone data.

As technology races ahead of the law, courts and lawmakers are still trying to figure out how to think about the often intimate data that cellphones contain, said Peter P. Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University. Neither the 1986 statute nor the Constitution, he said, could have anticipated how much information cellphones may contain, including detailed records of people’s travels and diagrams of their friends.

“It didn’t take into account what the modern cellphone has — your location, the content of communications that are easily readable, including Facebook posts, chats, texts and all that stuff,” Mr. Swire said.

For more on this story please visit the New York Times website >>

Digital proof can be gathered from computers, mobile phones, mobile navigation systems, digital still and video cameras, storage media (USBs, CDs, etc.) and other similar devices.

The new standard, ISO/IEC 27037:2012, Information technology – Security techniques – Guidelines for identification, collection, acquisition, and preservation of digital evidence, will ensure the integrity of such evidence for its admission in legal, disciplinary and other actions.

Maslina Daud, Project Editor of ISO/IEC 27037, says, "Digital evidence is inherently fragile, as it may be easily altered, tampered with or destroyed through improper handling or examination. ISO/IEC 27037 provides a harmonized and globally accepted methodology to safeguard its integrity and authenticity."

"Just as importantly", Ms. Daud argues, "as crime, and in particular cybercrime, increasingly takes place across borders, ISO/IEC 27037 will facilitate the exchange of digital evidence between jurisdictions by making sure that requirements and procedures are consistent."

ISO/IEC 27037 provides guidance to individuals involved in the identification, collection, acquisition and preservation of potential digital evidence such as:

• Digital Evidence First Responders (DEFR)
• Digital Evidence Specialists (DES)
• Incident response specialists
• Forensic laboratory managers

Decision-makers can rely on the standard to determine the credibility of digital evidence. It can also be used by organizations involved in protecting, analyzing and presenting digital evidence, as well as policy-making bodies creating and evaluating related procedures. The standard does not replace specific legal requirements of any jurisdiction, but is rather intended to serve as practical guidance in DEFR and DES investigations.

For more information please visit the ISO website >>

We’re not quite in the “post-PC world” yet, but new data from NetMarketShare says that we’re getting there.

According to their latest tracking numbers, smartphones and tablets accounted for 10.3% of all web browsing in October 2012, the first time mobile browsing has ever crossed the 10% threshold in the firm’s measurements.

What makes this particularly interesting is that mobile browsing accounted for as little as 7.2% of all browsing as recently as this past March, meaning that mobile browsing growth seems to have accelerated somewhat over the past few months.

iOS-based smartphones and tablets accounted for nearly 60% of all mobile browsing in October 2012, while Android-based devices accounted for just over 27% of all mobile browsing.

This actually underestimates the total amount of browsing share on mobile devices, since the sample does not contain data on apps, like maps.

For more detailed information visit their website here >>

"This research, for the first time, highlights the difference between mobile connections and individual mobile subscribers, and points to a significant growth opportunity for the mobile industry as we continue to connect the world’s population,”
said Anne Bouverot, Director General of the GSMA.

“By identifying inactive SIMs and multiple SIM ownership, we have developed the most accurate measurement of the global mobile subscriber base, which shows that only 45 per cent of the world’s population has subscribed to mobile services.”

Europe has the highest mobile penetration in the world, with countries such as Denmark, Finland, Germany and the UK already averaging close to 90 per cent subscriber penetration. Africa currently has the lowest penetration, with only one out of three people in the region subscribing to mobile services in 2012, a figure that is expected to increase to 40 per cent in 2017. 

For more on this story please visit the GSMA website >>

There are believed to be more than 7 billion people on this planet, and the overwhelming majority of them own cell phones. According to the International Telecommunication Union, roughly 86 out of 100 people own at least one cell phone, totaling approximately 6 billion subscriptions by the end of 2011. 

China alone accounts for 1 billion users and India is expected to hit the same milestone in the coming months, the Associated Press reported.

The U.N. agency also reported that 2.3 billion people, or about one in three globally, were Internet users, however there were inconsistencies between rich and developing countries. The ITU notes that 70% of people who use the Internet are from wealthier and more industrialized countries, compared to 24% who are located in poorer and developing nations.

You can download the full report and the Measuring Information Society 2012 Map for free here. ICT Development Index >>

Micro Systemation announce the launch of a brand new analytical tool called XAMN.

XAMN is a software package designed exclusively for the comparison of data extracted from smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices by forensic tools. This new software will be made available for sale in the coming months.

Designed by the makers of XRY the leading mobile forensic software solution, XAMN works seamlessly to allow you to drag and drop XRY files straight into the graphical user interface to start analysing data in greater detail than ever before

With mobile phone memories getting ever bigger, the challenge of dealing with large volumes of data is growing. Investigators need to review more and more data in order to find the crucial connections and prove associations, because it’s not just about the data, it’s about the meaning.

XAMN is the next generation of analysis tools for e-forensics and will enable greater understanding and discovery from the goldmine of mobile phone data available to investigators.

For more information please visit the product page here >>

The NPIA said it wants an e-forensics project, aimed at speeding up the examination of ICT used by criminals, to be available to all UK Police Forces from September.

Over the past seven years, the number of electronic devices examined by technology experts in police force hi-tech crime units (HTCUs) has grown nationally by 300%. 

A six-month pilot of the e-forensics project with five forces in the East Midlands resulted in a 90% increase in the number of computers and mobile phones examined, according to the agency.

Deputy chief constable Paul Crowthe, the Association of Chief Police Officers' lead on e-forensics, said:

"With the emergence of technology impacting on many crime types, the police service has recognised that all police forces were spending an increasing amount of time, money and staff on interrogating electronic devices and mobiles phones.

This project has dramatically reduced the time taken over each device and has also made a massive impact into case loads."

For more on this story see the Guardian Newspaper here >>

Interviews with software providers and forensic specialists in mobile device eDiscovery have hammered home that lesson. Most Legal IT professionals are comfortable with the different options and standards for collecting ESI (electronically stored information) from laptops and network servers.

Until fairly recently, the vast majority of civil discovery did not consider the ESI on mobile devices to be worth the effort to preserve, extract, review or produce. As corporate decision makers have become increasingly connected and mobile, their devices now store unique ESI that can provide an absolute chain of actions, locations and communications.

So if a mobile device is not just a hard drive, what is it, what does it store and how can you get it?

For more information about this story, please visit the Legal IT Professionals website >>