Gaining root access

As a mobile device forensic examiner, it is essential to know everything that relates to twisting and tweaking the device. This would help you to understand the internal working of the device in detail and comprehend many issues that you may face during your investigation. Rooting Android phones has become a common phenomenon and you can expect to encounter rooted phones during forensic examinations. The examiner, where applicable, may also need to root the device in order to acquire data for the forensic examination. Hence, it's important to know the ins and outs of rooted devices and how they are different from the other phones. The following sections cover information about Android rooting and other related concepts.

What is rooting?

The default administrative account in Unix-like operating systems is called "root". So, in Linux, the root user has the power to start/stop any system service, edit/delete any file, change the privileges of other users, and so on. We have...