Software Engineering Expert Performs Forensic Examination on Smartphone

Case Overview

This case takes place in Ohio and involves a man who was involved in a serious accident. The defendant was driving an 18 wheeler for defendant company and was involved in crash with plaintiffs car. The defendant was allegedly using his phone (Galaxy Android to post to call, text and post to social media site (Facebook. After the wreck, he attempted to delete the phone and all its data. The wreck resulted in the death of 2 occupants in the vehicle that the truck driver hit while allegedly distracted by his phone.

Questions to the Forensic Pathology expert and their responses

Please explain your knowledge of android phone technology?

We specialize in cellular device forensics and the vast majority of devices we analyze are Android based. We have a thorough understanding of the file-systems employed by Android devices, common repositories of operating system artifacts, and most common user app artifacts.

Do you have a detailed level of expertise in the programming underlying the android platform?

Additionally, we employ specialized digital forensic tools and knowledge for the analysis of SQLlite databases. SQLlite is the underlying database technology used by the Android OS and third-party applications. Data realized from this low-level analysis can be very valuable and is commonly overlooked by most forensic consultants relying on only traditional forensic software and equipment.

Please explain your experience working on similar cases?

As digital forensic examiners we may occasionally reference available source code but this is not common (case specific basis). Control testing is much more commonly required and this is especially true in distracted driving cases such as you describe. For example, if we find that a user is interacting with a specific app near the time of accident, it may be necessary to run test case scenarios on a control device and observe how data is stored and/or affected.

About the expert

This highly qualified expert is an IACIS certified forensic computer examiner with years of experience in the field. He received his BBA degree focusing on information systems from the University of Cincinnati and is a member of various professional associations, including the International Information Systems Forensics Association and the Information Systems Security Association. He has lectured at numerous conferences and workshops and is part of the Ohio High Technology Crime Investigation Association's Hall of Fame. He is the former lead technical security investigator at National City Corporation and a former programmer and analyst at Cincinnati Bell Information Systems. Currently, he is a partner and digital forensic examiner at a major digital forensics company in Ohio.

E-027279

Specialties:

Forensic Pathology