Date of Award

2022

Document Type

Honors

Degree Name

General Beadle Honors Program

First Advisor

Francisca Afua Opoku-Boateng

Abstract

Mobile forensics is a well-established, constantly evolving field in digital forensics. The proliferation of mobile devices requires the constant development of mobile forensics tools. With the rapid development of these tools, software vulnerabilities can become commonplace. Software vulnerabilities reside within the forensic tool’s software, meaning the tool should be tested and verified before field use. We aimed to propose a recommended tool testing framework for mobile forensic tools. To recommend a tool testing framework, we analyze the frameworks by utilizing a high-level comparative analysis methodology. The methodology allowed us to identify, analyze, and compare tool testing frameworks with the goal of recommending one. The results of the comparative analysis indicate that the validation verification framework is recommended for testing mobile forensic tools. We found that the framework is adaptative for forensic labs to perform their own testing in a scientifically verifiable manner. Furthermore, the recommended framework accounts for the time cost value of testing a forensic tool for software vulnerabilities. The findings show that current testing frameworks cannot support a broad range of tool testing scenarios due to the time cost value encountered when testing tools. Further research on testing the recommended framework would be required to verify the validation framework quantitively.

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