Mobile App Intern Final Blog Post

Project Wrap Up

The Mobile App Intern team chose 3 travel apps to analyze. Kayak, Expedia, and Google Trips. All three apps stored their data within the internal storage of each device it was downloaded onto. However, Expedia proved to show very little artifacts that could be useful for forensic analysts. Most of the data kept by Expedia is not data meant for the user or analysts’; it is meant for the app itself (data logs etc). Google Trips saved the most user data out of all three of the apps. It kept user info (username and password hash), trip details (title, locations, etc), and location data. Kayak mainly stored location data, the names of hotels, and rental company information. For example, if one were to use Kayak in order to rent a Mercedes-Benz for $60 USD a day, they can set what dates to rent said car and Kayak will keep all of that information about the car and company stored. The same was true for plane and bus tickets. Company, price, dates of departure/arrival, and user timestamps are all stored.

Final Thoughts

The Mobile App Intern Team is grateful to the LCDI to have been given the chance to utilize their devices in order to perform projects and research. The team was able to acquire new skills (like rooting Android devices) and read many useful journal articles relating to mobile forensics. 

More Research Projects
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The Internet of Things Team: An Inside Look
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