The common name of the smart card for UMTS. The USIM bears the identity of the subscriber, and its primary function is to secure the authenticity of the mobile station with respect to the network and vice versa. Additional functions include executing programs with protection against manipulation (authentication), user identification (using a PIN) and storing data, such as the telephone numbers
Published in Chapter:
Embedded Forensics: An Ongoing Research about SIM/USIM Cards
Antonio Savoldi (University of Brescia, Italy) and Paolo Gubian (University of Brescia, Italy)
Copyright: © 2010
|Pages: 28
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-836-9.ch017
Abstract
This chapter is aimed at introducing SIM and USIM card forensics, which pertains to the Small Scale Digital Device Forensics (SSDDF) (Harril, & Mislan, 2007) field. Particularly, we would like to pinpoint what follows. First, we will introduce the smart card world, giving a sufficiently detailed description regarding the main physical and logical main building blocks. Then we will give a general overview on the extraction of the standard part of the file system. Moreover, we will present an effective methodology to acquire all the observable memory content, that is, the whole set of files which represent the full file system of such devices. Finally, we will discuss some potential cases of data hiding at the file system level, presenting at the same time a detailed and useful procedure used by forensics practitioners to deal with such a problem.