Multimedia File Signature Analysis for Smartphone Forensics

With the emergence of smartphones and the widespread use of social media services, distribution of multimedia files over the Internet, and using mobile phones, has increased exponentially over the past few years. A significant number of cybercrimes pertain to illicit possession, modification, and distribution of multimedia files. The use of smartphones for this purpose makes these mobile phones rich sources of evidence. Therefore, it is crucial for forensic examiners to have the capability of recovering, analyzing, and authenticating the source of multimedia contents stored on these devices. This paper focuses on the analysis of multimedia files created on the most popular smartphones in order to ascertain the source and examine whether the files are original or edited through these devices. The popular smartphones brands analyzed in this paper include iPhone 5, iPhone 6, Blackberry Z10, Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Nokia Lumia 930, and Lenovo A536. Experimental results on all these brands are also presented.