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Effectiveness of Mobile Wiping Applications

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Future Access Enablers for Ubiquitous and Intelligent Infrastructures (FABULOUS 2021)

Abstract

Given the considerable amount of data (including sensitive and personal information) collected, stored, disseminated by mobile devices, there is a need to ensure that such devices can be securely wiped when they are misplaced, stolen or disposed. Hence, in this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of three categories of wiping applications: Factory Reset, Remote Reset, Data Wiping Applications (apps). Specifically, we study two popular wiping apps (i.e., Shreddit – Data Eraser by PalmTronix, and Secure Wipe by Pinellas CodeWorks) and install both apps on three test devices, namely: Samsung S5 (Android 6.0.1), Samsung S5 Active (OS version 6.0.1), and an iPhone 6S (iOS 13.2.2). We then study the extent of data that can be recovered, from the three categories of wiping, using two popular commercial mobile forensic software, namely: Mobile Phone Examiner Plus (MPE+) from Accessdata, and MOBILedit from Compelson labs.

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Acknowledgement

We would like to express our gratitude to Compelson Labs for the support and making MobilEdit available to our research. We would also like to acknowledge the contributions of Andrew Mendoza in the research of background and related work, and testing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Systems and Cyber Security, University of Texas San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, 78249, USA

    Kevin Jochims, Andres Bello & Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo

Authors
  1. Kevin Jochims
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  2. Andres Bello
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  3. Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

    Dragan Perakovic

  2. Technical University of Košice, Prešov, Slovakia

    Lucia Knapcikova

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© 2021 ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering

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Jochims, K., Bello, A., Choo, KK.R. (2021). Effectiveness of Mobile Wiping Applications. In: Perakovic, D., Knapcikova, L. (eds) Future Access Enablers for Ubiquitous and Intelligent Infrastructures. FABULOUS 2021. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 382. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78459-1_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78459-1_1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-78458-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-78459-1

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