Future Projects...

Windows Phone 8 Forensics

Having spent the last 6-12 months developing forensic software in Python, i'm due to present the near-completed product in the coming months and after graduation, I will be looking to take on a new project. I wanted to do something that nobody has really looked at yet, or at least something that few people have looked at.

With smartphones becoming the 'must-have' item of recent years, I wanted to look at mobile phone forensics, the obvious choice being an Android or iOS device. The problem with Android and iOS is that they have been out for a long time, people have researched them and people have released books about them.

But what about Windows Phone 8? The market-share isn't as good as Android or iOS devices, but it wont be, it's a relatively new mobile OS and it's based on Windows 8, so in theory, it should be similar to analysing a Windows desktop OS. I'm pretty certain that Windows Phone 8 must have been analysed by somebody, so in order to make the research more obscure, what about if the phone was wiped remotely before a forensic examination was performed?

Like Android and iOS, Windows Phone has the ability to remotely wipe the device, lock the device and ring the device. What I want to know is: how secure is the wipe? Would someone determined be able to recover any data? What data remains on the device, if any? There are quite a few questions I have before attempting the project and i'm sure more questions would arise as the project begins.

If you can think of any projects, or questions you have about Windows Phone forensics, let me know in the comment section below.

Thanks for reading.