Rice Campus Cell Phone Forensic Software Tools Guest Lectures

IIT School of Applied Technology will host two guest lectures on cell phone forensic software tools. The lecturers are graduates of IIT’s Master of Cyber Forensics and Security program. They will be discussing software tools developed by viaForensics, a local company that is one of the world leaders in cell phone forensics. The lectures, to be held on Monday, November 10 from 7–9 p.m. at the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Campus in Wheaton are open to all attendees and are part of the ITMS 555 Mobile Cyber Forensics course.

Abstracts and Speaker Information

viaExtract
Data present on a mobile device might consist of one or more artifacts crucial to an investigation, including contact lists, call records, photos, downloads, messages (emails, text messages, and instant messages), application-specific information (such as a list of Facebook friends), and information about the device itself (such as a list of all of the applications that are installed as well as which WiFi access points the device has been configured to automatically connect). The viaExtract software by viaForensics  has been designed to assist the forensic investigator with the ability to perform various types of data extractions on a wide range of devices running the Android mobile operating system and soon, Apple’s iOS mobile operating system. Speaker Ben Khodja will discuss and demonstrate viaExtract’s data-extraction capabilities as well as other features that have been implemented to assist with the investigation process.

Speaker
Ben Khodja is currently a graduate student in IIT’s Master of Cyber Forensics and Security program completing his thesis work in steganography while on leave from viaForensics. In addition to his work in cell phone forensics, Khodja has developed one of the best MP3 steganalysis tools available. He recently presented this work at a national Association for Computing Machinery conference.

viaLab
This lecture will introduce viaLab, a recently announced product from viaForensics—what it does and how it’s helpful for security-minded analysts. Different areas of mobile security will be discussed to understand how the tool can help running forensic, network, and code analyses. There will be examples using real-world apps and quick demos to highlight some of the features. Also discussed will be the CE edition, and some of the exciting stuff planned for the product.

Speaker
Since graduating from IIT SAT more than two years ago, Terence Fernandes has been with viaForensics, first as a forensics analyst and now as a mobile security engineer and the team lead for the viaLab product.