Extracting Passwords and User-Related Data from Yahoo Messenger and Mail Client on Android Phones

Aditya Mahajan, Laxmikant G

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide a simplified methodology to extract information stored in the internal memory of phone like chat logs, contact history, email history and user login password of a user using a Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Mail application App on an Android Phone .This will help us classify the fore-mentioned artifacts as per their forensic importance to a forensic investigator depending upon the nature of the digital crime being analyzed. The introduction of smartphones into the market has opened up a whole new scope of possibilities on how a mobile phone can be used by a user. The modern day smartphones are capable of strongly competing with computers in terms of the functionality and features that they can provide. Some of these features include email support, instant messengers, interactive games, GPS navigation, music player, document viewers and readers. The feature which we intend to primarily focus on in this paper is Yahoo instant messenger applications and Yahoo mail client application that can be freely downloaded and installed on Android Smartphone. The recovery of digital evidence in the form of user names, Passwords, conversations and contacts details on Instant messengers and mail clients may yield valuable information regarding the suspect/victim’s chatting and email history or their contacts list details.

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