A Bleeding Digital Heart: Identifying Residual Data Generation from Smartphone Applications Interacting with Medical Devices

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential of smartphone applications interacting with medical devices as sources of digital evidence, providing empirical analysis and documentation of relevant artifacts for forensic investigations.

Contribution

It offers the first empirical study on the forensic viability of medical device-related smartphone app data and documents key artifacts for digital investigations.

Findings

Smartphone apps can generate residual data useful for forensic analysis.

Certain artifacts from medical app interactions are consistently recoverable.

The study highlights the forensic potential of medical device app data in investigations.

Abstract

The integration of medical devices in everyday life prompts the idea that these devices will increasingly have evidential value in civil and criminal proceedings. However, the investigation of these devices presents new challenges for the digital forensics community. Previous research has shown that mobile devices provide investigators with a wealth of information. Hence, mobile devices that are used within medical environments potentially provide an avenue for investigating and analyzing digital evidence from such devices. The research contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it provides an empirical analysis of the viability of using information from smartphone applications developed to complement a medical device, as digital evidence. Second, it includes documentation on the artifacts that are potentially useful in a digital forensics investigation of smartphone applications that interact with medical devices.