Mobile Device Forensics

A high-net-worth crypto executive watched in real-time as $4.2M was drained from their exchange account. Their phone never lost cellular service, they never received an unexpected password reset link, and they still had physical possession of their device. They assumed the exchange had suffered an internal breach.

Our investigation proved otherwise. By auditing the telco's signaling logs, we discovered the attackers didn't need to steal the client's SIM card physically. They exploited inherited flaws in the SS7 (Signaling System 7) protocol—the backbone of global telecom roaming. By purchasing access to a rogue SS7 node on the dark web, the attackers tricked the cellular network into believing the executive's phone was roaming in a foreign country.

A Fortune 500 defense contractor noticed anomalous battery drain across the iPhones of five senior executives. Standard mobile anti-virus scans reported the devices were completely secure. The company restricted app installations strictly to an internal corporate store, supposedly eliminating malware risks.

When our forensics team pulled the system diagnostic logs via Apple Configurator, we found the culprit hiding in plain sight. The enterprise's own Mobile Device Management (MDM) server had been quietly compromised months earlier via an unpatched web vulnerability. The attacker didn't need to break into the phones; the phones inherently trusted the MDM server implicitly.

During a physical Red Team assessment for a major financial institution, our goal was to bridge the air gap from the public lobby into the secure internal network. Traditional Wi-Fi phishing (Evil Twin attacks) failed. The target was a heavily locked-down corporate Android tablet carried by floor managers.

We developed a custom exploit targeting a known heap-overflow vulnerability within the Android Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) stack. We concealed a Raspberry Pi inside a hollowed-out potted plant in the lobby. As managers walked past, the Pi initiated malformed BLE pairing requests.

A diplomat traveling between summits found their device exhibiting strange UI glitches. Upon returning, our forensics lab imaged the device. The logical file system showed that an unrecognized Developer Certificate had been trusted three days prior—coinciding perfectly with a layover in a private airport lounge.

The client had used a complimentary USB charging kiosk. While they thought they were just pulling power, the kiosk was embedded with a hidden microcontroller. When the phone was plugged in, the kiosk aggressively negotiated a USB data connection, pretending to be a verified desktop computer.

An investigative journalist relying on a popular end-to-end encrypted messaging application realized their sources were being outed. They swore they had never shared their passcode and solely communicated via the encrypted app.

During our code-level audit of the device, the encrypted messaging app checked out perfectly against its public GitHub repository—except for one crucial difference. The app hadn't been downloaded from the official Play Store. The journalist was targeted in a highly sophisticated Spear-Phishing campaign that tricked them into installing a "beta" update via a direct APK link.

Physical security badges stored in Apple Wallet and Google Pay were supposedly un-cloneable. Yet, a server room in a high-security facility was accessed using the credentials of an engineer who was sitting at a coffee shop three miles away at the time of the breach.

Our incident response team linked the breach to an advanced NFC relay attack. The attackers worked in pairs. Operative A sat directly behind the engineer at the coffee shop with a concealed high-powered NFC reader in their backpack. Operative B stood at the server room door with an NFC emulator.

A regional bank saw a sudden spike in unauthorized wire transfers originating from perfectly valid, multifactor-authenticated mobile sessions. The common denominator? All victims had recently installed a popular, highly-rated local weather application.

We reverse-engineered the weather app. When vetted by the App Store automated scanners, the app was entirely benign. However, 48 hours after installation, the app reached out to a remote server and fetched a secondary ".dex" (Dalvik Executable) file. It loaded this code dynamically into its own memory space, bypassing all App Store static analyses.

A diplomatic envoy realized their "secure" cellular calls were being transcribed and leaked to the press. They were using modern 5G devices equipped with VoLTE (Voice over LTE), which utilizes strong built-in encryption that historically resists passive eavesdropping.

Our Physical Security team swept the embassy perimeter with spectrum analyzers. We discovered a hostile IMSI Catcher (often called a Stingray) mounted in a van two blocks away. The Stingray was broadcasting a signal slightly stronger than the legitimate cell tower, but it wasn't a 5G signal.