Law enforcement have known about iPhone tracking since at least last year

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20056344-281.html

by marcusbooster • 15 years ago

47 10 15 years ago

news.cnet.com

ErrantX3• 15 years ago

At least some phones running Google's Android OS

Android is a dream for someone like me (forensic analyst). It is easy to get data off, and is chock full of all sorts of cached information. iPhone is more difficult, and can sometimes be very hit and miss in what you can get off it.

I've used pretty much all of the tools listed on that page, and none are as magical as they claim. One of the best is .XRY, which is my preference because for a lot of phones you can use it to extract a raw memory dump and analyse it more carefully/deeply.

The key thing to know here is that all phones cache location information like this in some form. Older phones used to only cache a little bit, but usually enough to recover some previous cell sites. Modern phones, with more location features, more memory and more advances OS's, just store more of this information.

IMO it's not so much that LE have been keeping it deliberately quiet. I mean, I for one figured it was fairly obvious. The story here is, IMO, it being sent back to Apple/Google etc. Not that the data is cached.

blub• 15 years ago

What about a Symbian E-series device with its on-the-fly encryption activated? Can you get anything off it if the phone is turned on but locked?

ErrantX3• 15 years ago

Honest answer; never come across one. I'm going to guess that will be a serious hurdle to overcome (assuming no one has found a workaround).

mixmax• 15 years ago

Somewhat unrelated - but who do forensic analysts work for, and what do they look for? Are they only working for government agencies, or is there some kind of private work as well? Are you looking for terrorists, kiddie porn or something entirely different?

Just curious...

ErrantX3• 15 years ago

I work for a private company and we contract out to both the private and public sectors. There is definitely a lot of private work; not just investigations but document recovery etc. It also segues into general security work. The public sector, at least in the UK, is on the decline. Budgets are dropping and so everything is going in-house and they are getting rid of the expensive contractors.

Most of the work in my experience is fraud related, probably around 80% of it. But this can vary (with the time of year, current economic/political climate etc.). As exciting as it sometimes gets to sound (and indeed, sometimes is) 99% of digital forensics is sheer. absolute. boredom. :)

fmavituna• 15 years ago

This is quite common, years ago I was working as a security consultant to a police department and this was before EFF made it public - http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/ they were actually arresting people based on tracking printer serials in money counterfeiting cases.

jeggers5• 15 years ago

This particular topic has been discussed to death lately. It's really not that big of a deal. Apple is doing this to aid in the phone being able to Triangulate it's position in relation to cell towers (when gps is unavailable).

Also, the phone is NOT constantly tracking your location. It only logs a new location (a) when you launch a location-aware app, e.g. Facebook, Maps etc. And (b) when you have never been to that location before.

It does not log the amount of times you have visited the location.

I suspect Apple is planning to do something cool with this Data, because of the way it is synced across Computer and Phone. Keep in mind however, the Data cannot be used to Track you constantly, only to see where you have been in the past, but, the log will never update to show that you visited a certain location more than once. Hope this helps!

mattmanser• 15 years ago

The article totally contradicts you:

Among computer forensics specialists, those location logs--which record nearby cell tower coordinates and time stamps and cannot easily be disabled by someone who wants to use location services

And worse still, the article clearly shows this data is already being used by law enforcement for unmonitored tracking.

tedunangst• 15 years ago

That doesn't contradict him at all. "cannot easily be disabled by someone who wants to use location services" is totally in line with "when you launch a location-aware app".

Also, I didn't see the part of the article where law enforcement is using this for unmonitored tracking. They can pull the data off your phone once when they arrest you. But how do they continue to keep pulling the data off your phone? If the police take my phone from me every day, I don't think that qualifies as unmonitored.

zaidf• 15 years ago

Is there any iPhone app that can quietly log your gps location every minute and let you replay your life's movements at the end of the day or week?

Law enforcement have known about iPhone tracking since at least last year

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