O’Reilly news

iPhone Forensics--New from O'Reilly: Recovering Evidence, Personal Data, and Corporate Assets

October 7, 2008

iPhone Forensics Sebastopol, CA—The iPhone has quickly become a marketing leader in mobile technology, finding its way into the corporate world and the everyday lives of millions of end users. Its wide range of functionality, combined with its "always on" design, make it an ideal functional, mobile office. "The cost of this productivity is the danger of storing sensitive data on the device," cautions Jonathan Zdziarski, author of the newly released iPhone Forensics (O'Reilly, US $39.99). "Any given iPhone is likely to contain sensitive information belonging to its owner, and some types of information that may belong to others: corporate email, documents, and photos, to name a few.

"As the dark side of such a versatile device becomes more evident," Zdziarski adds, "so does the need to recover personal information from it."

In iPhone Forensics, Zdziarski supplies the knowledge necessary to conduct complete and highly specialized forensic analysis of the iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPod Touch. Intended for lawful forensic examination of devices by corporate security officers, law enforcement personnel, and private forensic examiners, the book introduces readers to digital forensics and outlines the technical procedures needed to recover low-level data from the iPhone. Federal, state, and multinational agencies have helped to test and verify the procedures outlined in the book, and that information is now available for the private sector.

This book helps you:

  • Determine what type of data is stored on the device
  • Break v1.x and v2.x passcode-protected iPhones to gain access to the device
  • Build a custom recovery toolkit for the iPhone
  • Interrupt iPhone 3G's "secure wipe" process
  • Conduct data recovery of a v1.x and v2.x iPhone user disk partition, and preserve and recover the entire raw user disk partition
  • Recover deleted voicemail, images, email, and other personal data, using data carving techniques
  • Recover geotagged metadata from camera photos
  • Discover Google map lookups, typing cache, and other data stored on the live file system
  • Extract contact information from the iPhone's database
  • Use different recovery strategies based on case needs, and more

iPhone Forensics includes techniques used by more than 200 law enforcement agencies worldwide, and is a must-have for any corporate compliance and disaster recovery plan.

"This book is a must for anyone attempting to examine the iPhone. The level of forensic detail is excellent. If only all guides to forensics were written with this clarity!" Andrew Sheldon, Director of Evidence Talks, computer forensics expert.

For a review copy or more information please email kathrynb@oreilly.com. Please include your delivery address and contact information.

Jonathan Zdziarski is better known as the hacker "NerveGas" in the iPhone development community. He is well known for his work in cracking the iPhone and lead the effort to port the first open source applications. Hailed on many geek news sites for his accomplishments, Jonathan is best known for the first application to illustrate and take full advantage of the major iPhone APIs: NES.app, a portable Nintendo Entertainment System emulator.

Additional Resources:
For more information about this book, including table of contents, index, author bios, and cover graphic, see the catalog page for iPhone Forensics.

iPhone Forensics
Jonathan Zdziarski
ISBN: 9780596153588, 138 pages, Book Price: $39.99 USD, £24.99 GBP
PDF Price: $31.99 USD

order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938
1-707-827-7000


About O’Reilly

O’Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O’Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying “faint signals” from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.

Email a link to this press release