Saturday, November 29, 2008

Cell site analysis (CSA) and fringe coverage

I'm delighted to see that Greg Smith has been able to update his blog frequently over the past few weeks. Greg is a genuine expert in the field of mobile forensics but it's his enthusiasm and willingness to share his knowledge which makes him stand out just as much as his expertise (check out his recent posts on cell site analysis and fringe coverage to see what I mean). If you're not already subscribed to Greg's blog, do so now!

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Ultra-thin membrane changes SIM card usage

Fascinating new post from Greg Smith of Trew & Co. on his blog:

Examiners may come across an ultra-thin (0.3mm) membrane that lays over the contacts of a SIM card. Called the V200 SIM Dialer, the membrane is "Prefix base programmable (For routing prefix and bypass prefix setting)". What does that mean? Well, it allows mobile phones installed with SIM Tool Kit menu (most up to date phones have them) and define access to the network. The point being, if you are looking for least-cost routing for calls or want to use a calling card, rather than have mobile network call charges, then this device makes that happen, apparently.

How does it do it? "Dial the desired number directly each time you call, SIM dialer V200 will automatically dial IP access in front of the dialed number". As the manufacturer promotes, using their device will not change your dialling habits and there is "No cutting, No pounching your SIM".


More details and a link to a YouTube vid here.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Lance Mueller - cell phone forensic tools

For anyone who missed it earlier this month, Lance Mueller posted some interesting thoughts on his blog about the current state of cell phone forensics:

As part of my work, I recently put together a fairly comprehensive cell phone forensic course. As part of the development phase of this project, I had a chance to use most of all the common cell phone forensic tools and put them through the paces with over 50 different phones, most of which were international models.

In opinion, the forensic industry is nowhere near where we are today with cell phone forensics compared to computer forensics. Mostly because it is a fairly new sub-field of digital forensics and the tools just have not been around long and have not yet evolved to the state where the current computer forensic tools are at.


Read the rest, including tool evaluations, here.