Short version:
Take logical extractions from cars, trucks, and infotainment systems and parse them for interesting artifacts.
vLEAPP is Python 3 code and can be downloaded here:
https://github.com/abrignoni/VLEAPP
Long Version:
The need to analyze cars for digital forensic artifacts has grown recently as vehicles have smart mobile features by default. From GPS coordinates, contact databases, call logs, and even automated driving, the forensic value of these items cannot be overstated. Sadly there are not many options regarding tools to parse these data sources. vLEAPP aspires to be an open source platform the community can use to aggregate forensic artifacts found on the most mobile of data sources, cars.
This project started from Geraldine Blay's idea of being able to easily parse any car data source in a way that easily enables the backtracking of report data to source data. We decided to use the xLEAPP code base to do so.
Challenges
Dealing with cars brings a host of challenges to the examiner. Some are:
- Data extraction.
- In order to pull data from infotainment systems special tooling is usually needed. Many times a chip-off is required. This can be a labor intensive process that requires extensive training.
- vLEAPP plays no role in the data extraction process.
- Lack of standardization.
- Different brands will have different ways of developing their navigation, infotainment, and sensor data recording systems. Sometimes there are different ways of doing these within cars and models of the same brand. It goes without saying that the digital forensics process is has to be well executed. Artifact identification and parsing automation is needed in this field.
- Hopefully with the arrival of Google's Android Auto and Apple's CarPlay there will a more unified data source type across vehicle brands.
- Unfamiliar file systems
- File systems in use by cars might not be recognized by many forensic tools. The QNX file system by Blackberry is one example. Some examiners resort to carving in the hopes of getting relevant data from these nono-supported file systems. Be aware that using branded forensic tools might not help where other more traditional computing processes might. For example QNX file systems can be accessed using a Linux Ubuntu distribution. After accessing the logical files in the QNX file system you can package them all up in a zip file for analysis in any tool or by hand. The following video is a step by step process on how to do so.
