Practical Mobile Forensics - Fourth Edition

Extracting an APK file from an Android device

Apps that come preinstalled with the phone are stored in the /system/app directory. Third-party applications that are downloaded by the user are stored in the /data/app folder. The following method helps you gain access to the APK files on the device; it works on both rooted and non-rooted devices:

1. Identify the package name of the app by issuing the # adb.exe shell pm list packages command.

The following is the output of the preceding command:

List of package names present on the device

As shown in the preceding command-line output, the list of package names is displayed. Try to find a match ...