Forensic guide to iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal and Skype data acquisition

Instant messaging apps have become the de-facto standard of real-time, text-based communications. The acquisition of instant messaging chats and communication histories can be extremely important for an investigation. In this article, we compare the five top instant messaging apps for iOS in the context of their forensic analysis.

Acquisition and Extraction
Speaking of iOS, there are several methods to acquiring communications going through an instant messaging app. The MITM (man-in-the-middle) attack is practically out of the question for most modern instant messaging apps; if there are exceptions, we aren’t aware of those. Even on Android devices, a MITM attack would require installing a third-party SSL certificate, and even that may not work for some instant messengers.

The ability to obtain communication histories from the vendor is a great tool in the hands of the law enforcement. The policies of different vendors vary greatly from near-instant full disclosure to flat non-disclosure with stops in between. We’ll discuss it in detail for each of the messaging apps.

Cloud extraction may be possible from several sources, which include iCloud synchronized data (including end-to-end encrypted data), iCloud backups and stand-alone backups in iCloud Drive. It’s up to the vendor to decide where and how to store the data; more on that later.

Finally, the data can be extracted from the iPhone device itself. For some messaging apps, logical extraction via iTunes-style backups is enough, while some other messengers don’t store anything in local backups. Imaging the file system (and, in some cases, decrypting the keychain) is always enough to gain full access to conversation histories.

So let us see the different extraction options available for the five top instant messaging apps for iOS.

https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2020/04/forensic-guide-to-imessage-whatsapp-telegram-signal-and-skype-data-acquisition/

#forensic #guide #imessage #whatsapp #telegram #signal #skype
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The Great iPwn Journalists Hacked with Suspected NSO Group iMessage ‘Zero-Click’ Exploit

This summer, iPhones belonging to as many as 36 Al Jazeera journalists were silently infected with malware, according to research released Sunday. They were subjected to silent attacks that appeared to exploit a vulnerability in Apple’s iOS and installed malware on the iOS devices, leaving reporters’ phones open to snooping, the researchers claimed.

In July and August 2020, government operatives used NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware to hack 36 personal phones belonging to journalists, producers, anchors, and executives at Al Jazeera. The personal phone of a journalist at London-based Al Araby TV was also hacked.

The phones were compromised using an exploit chain that we call KISMET, which appears to involve an invisible zero-click exploit in iMessage. In July 2020, KISMET was a zero-day against at least iOS 13.5.1 and could hack Apple’s then-latest iPhone 11.

Based on logs from compromised phones, we believe that NSO Group customers also successfully deployed KISMET or a related zero-click, zero-day exploit between October and December 2019.

The journalists were hacked by four Pegasus operators, including one operator MONARCHY that we attribute to Saudi Arabia, and one operator SNEAKY KESTREL that we attribute to the United Arab Emirates.

https://citizenlab.ca/2020/12/the-great-ipwn-journalists-hacked-with-suspected-nso-group-imessage-zero-click-exploit/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2020/12/20/apple-security-warning-zero-click-iphone-hacks-hit-36-al-jazeera-journalists/

#ipwn #iphone #apple #journalists #hacked #nso #imessage #exploit #zeroclick #kismet #jazeera
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