Customer Reviews

iPhone Forensics: Recovering Evidence, Personal Data, and Corporate Assets

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I wish the author had just put the info on a free website. The book is just a document, a pamphlet as another reviewer mentioned. I feel a bit ripped-off. In fact, in one place the author actually says "before proceeding, ensure that the firmware ... falls within the range of versions supported by this document." He is referring to the book but calling it a document. I think he intended it to be just a document and O'Reilly convinced him to make it a book so O'Reilly could make some money.

As far as technical material, it's all good and well-written. There are a few cases where it appears the O'Reilly editor might have cluelessly changed a sentence, but those cases are rare compared to some professionally-edited books. There are some typos, even in the author's bio! But few compared to many books. The index was rushed, I'm guessing. It didn't include the items I wanted to find.

The only other caveat I can think of is that if you are considering forensically analyzing your iPhone just for fun, be prepared for quite a bit of work and possible headaches. With firmware 2.x, there are numerous, reasonably complex steps that must be followed. You will need lots of time and patience and little aversion to risk. Note that you are jail-breaking your phone so that you can install utilities in the system partition, which voids the warranty from what I understand. Also, you could brick your iPhone, though in theory you could restore it if there are problems.

All in all, great info for forensics examiners in law-enforcement and corporations. I give it three stars instead of five because of the high price for a pamphlet.

I normally don't leave reviews but my copy showed up today and I wanted to warn folks. This book is less then 100 pages. Looking closer at the listing it does say 138 but it is 120 with the index. Till you drop out the fluff you're left with little more then a pamphlet. Honestly I never even looked at page count when I pre-ordered as it was an O'Reilly book. It is very thin. Information is okay (still working through it) but to charge [...] for a book this small is ludicrous. I've never been this disappointed in an O'Reilly title - some have been so-so but never a down-right ripoff. My copy will be returning.

This is an invaluable resource to understanding forensic details in regards to the iPhone. While it is small in size (coming in at just over 100 pages), it is dense in detail. This book provides good detail about where data on the iPhone is located, how to recover it, and how to keep your forensic footprint small.

For readers not as versed in computer forensics, the book does a good job introducing the subject. The iPhone is disceted in detail, and much information is provided regarding how to access the details of the phone that Apple doesn't want you to get at. Once you get at that information, the book shows how to extract that data onto a non-iPhone device. This is a great read for anyone who may have to deal with recovering data off an iPhone due to terminiation or other law enforcement issues.

My only complaint about the book is that this first edition was printed in September 2008, so it's missing some information about current versions of the iPhone firmware and hardware for the iPhone 3GS iPhone 4. Aside from that single issue, this is an excellent resource, and certainly a great resource for hardware up to the iPhone 3 and firmware versions up to 2.x.

This book is definitly not for you in active forensics. The methods described are outdated, the book only covers up til iphone OS 2.x, nothing you will find in a realworld scenario 2009/2010.

Upon contacting the author for an updated method, which oreilly boasts about on their website aswell as the author, the author wants you to pay him $5000 annually. Keep away from this charlatan, do some online research instead, you will learn more, starting with dev-teams redsnow and othe FREE utils, you can modify those utils to do the work, forensically sound.

I am very disapointed. Shame on you Zdziarsky. Shame on you O'reilly books.

Zdziarski has literally written the bible of iPhone forensics in this book. It is written not from the standpoint of hacking the device, but from obtaining and preserving the digital evidence on the device. The methodology is sound, and verifiable. Exceptionally well documented, it has proven to be one of my best, and most used, reference books. If you have a forensic examination of an iPhone, you shouldn't proceed until you've read this book.

This book is an excellent documentation of the processes required to bypass the passcode of a locked iPhone and for hashing and creating a DD image of the two data partitions found on the iPhone. Works for both 1.X and 2.X iphones. I also recommend taking the course, well worth the money and provides an excellent hands on for the processes found in the book. Jonathan is a wealth of knowledge and an excellent instructor.

Awesome book. The other reviewer that gave it one start clearly did not actually read it, just whine about how thin it is. I found it to be very informative and has a lot of interesting information that has not be published anywhere else.

Jonathan has written and developed excellent content in this manual that was orgininally created for LE agencies. The book will utilize all your grey matter and is a very intensive read. The methods and processes described in the manual work quite well and is an excellent guide for his workshops.

For those that have given his work poor reviews, then perhaps they would like to improve on his work and quit complaining.

This book is a must-have for anyone even considering doing forensic work on iPhones. I have used the methodology in the book and verified it for myself. Excellent resource!!