Micro Systemation

Thursday, 11-Aug-2011 21:08:48 UTC

Phone Evidence helps UK Police

Rioters' mobile phones could help police investigation

UK Police may be able to use rioters' mobile phone information to help convict them, say legal experts.

Investigators can apply to see the contents of text and instant messages, as well as their location.

For more information on this story please visit the BBC Website >>

Friday, 29-Jul-2011 14:07:16 UTC

Mobile Phone Evidence Convicts Killers

How a mobile phone broke the killers' wall of silence

Two men who refused to give evidence during their trial in Antigua were convicted of murder, thanks to forensic evidence provided by the Digital Electronic Forensic services (DEF), a branch of the Metropolitan Police Service, United Kingdom.

Crucial to the evidence against the pair were two mobile phones – one belonging to the victim and the other to the accused.

During the trial, it was revealed that a defendant had inserted his SIM card into the victim's phone 12 hours after the shooting. The court also heard recordings stored on that phone – one in which a defendant was heard talking to a female friend and another in which he is heard singing.

This phone was later sold to a woman for about $200 by a man standing opposite the defandant's home in Golden Grove. The phone of the accused also provided key evidence against the defandants.

For more information on this story visit the Independant Website >>

Thursday, 21-Jul-2011 13:07:55 UTC

The Phone Forensic Examiners Top 30

What are the most popular mobiles used by digital forensic examiners?

It’s an interesting question - assuming the average mobile phone examiner gets exposed to lots of different devices over the course of their duties, when it comes to choosing a mobile device of their own, what do they pick?

We’ve been playing with our website analytics package to see what useful information we could retrieve about our visitors. When it comes to niche markets I think we can safely say Micro Systemation is pretty niche; given that our market is extremely well focused on just one thing – digital forensics for mobile phones.

As our customer base tends to be dominated by law enforcement, government and military types; it makes for some interesting observations as to what our visitors personal mobile device preferences are?

We totally accept that this is not a particularly detailed scientific study and no doubt you can very easily argue why this information is not that representative – nevertheless it’s the holiday season (in the northern hemisphere) and we thought this subject was light-hearted and interesting enough topic to publish for your reading pleasure in your downtime.

So what are the dramatic conclusions we have come to; well it seems you really like the iPhone but Google is the real winner.

Not exactly shocking news but it turns out that the iPhone is the number one smartphone to visit our website, responsible for over 22% of our mobile visitors. This is quickly followed by the iPad soaking up another 16%. So between the two devices it seems that Apple accounts for around 38% of all our mobile visitors.

However Google's Android Operating System is responsible for a larger 45% of all of our mobile device operating system traffic!

What’s more interesting and curious perhaps, was the number 2 slot occupied by the mysterious ”Not Set”. The conspiracy theories abound about the causes of “Not Set” – do you all have access to super new beta versions of unidentifiable phones. Are all you using the latest Shanzhai clone phones running Android with false IMEIs or is it the case that you are all so surveillance conscious, that you have disabled the model identification on your devices?

We welcome your contributions as to possible causes of “Not Set”, as the more tedious and realistic answer that our analytics software is not that good, was too disappointing to consider.

Phone Forensic Examiners - Top 30
 

A final thought - by the middle of 2011 not one single Nokia device now appears in our Top 30!

Monday, 18-Jul-2011 12:07:26 UTC

CSI Smartphone

How forensic experts use smartphone data to place suspects at the scene of the crime

United Kingdom: Last year, the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) placed mobile phone evidence in the top tier of training requirements for officers, teaching them how to secure evidence gleaned from handsets, with 3,500 officers a year expected to take the course.

This is a great article with comments from a number of Micro Systemation customers including CCL, FMS & Disklabs.

Read more: What the police can learn from your smartphone at PC Pro >>