Understanding messaging forensics
Short Message Service (SMS) messages and Instant Messaging (IM) chat applications, such as WhatsApp or Telegram, may contain very important information that can aid any kind of investigation.
Before we dive into the details of how to analyze this data, we'll briefly introduce the different messaging solutions available on an iOS device:
- SMS is the traditional form of messaging, which uses the GSM/LTE cellular network to deliver messages. The service allows the user to send and receive messages of up to 160 characters, although messages can be concatenated to support longer text. In SMS messaging, the message is sent from one phone number to another.
- iMessage was introduced in iOS 5 and allows users to exchange instant messages along with likes, emojis, reactions, and attachments. As iMessage is preinstalled on every iOS device, it has a huge user base of more than 1.6 billion active users worldwide. An iMessage account is not tied...