Practical Mobile Forensics - Fourth Edition

Parsing Third-Party Application Files

Third-party applications have taken the smartphone community by storm. Most smartphone owners have more than one app on their device that they rely on to chat, game, get directions, or share pictures. According to https://www.statista.com/statistics/276623/number-of-apps-available-in-leading-app-stores/, there are almost 5 million apps worldwide for various smartphones. Apple's App Store offers approximately 1.8 million apps, Google Play offers 2.47 million, Amazon offers 600,000, and Windows offers 670,000. This number is expected to grow exponentially through 2020.

The goal of this chapter is to introduce you to the various applications seen on Android, iOS devices, and Windows Phones. Each application ...