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Hacker Teaches iPhone Forensics To Police
Ponca City, We love you writes "The Mercury News reports that former hacker Jonathan Zdziarski has been tapped by law-enforcement agencies nationwide to teach them just how much information is stored in iPhones — and how to get it. 'These devices are people's companions today,' says Zdziarski. 'They're not mobile phones anymore. They organize people's lives. And if you're doing something criminal, something about it is probably going to go through that phone.' For example, every time an iPhone user closes out of the built-in mapping application, the phone snaps a screenshot and stores it. Savvy law-enforcement agents armed with search warrants can use those snapshots to see if a suspect is lying about whereabouts during a crime."
Most smart people find other work for two reasons:
1) When you are smart, you have options. Smart is a talent people want, particularly practical smarts of the problem solving nature. So you find that when you have that, you have options of where to work and what to do. Makes crime less attractive.
2) Smart people can better understand the consequences for crime, and the likelihood of getting caught especially on repeated attempts. So even if crime is tempting, they don't do it because they are smart enough to think ahead and realize it isn't worth the risk over all.
Most criminals are just not that bright. A friend of mine has worked with the public defender's office and the stories he has of the stupid criminals they try to defend and just amazing. They get caught and busted by their own stupidity more than anything else. They love to run their mouths to the police, they never plan their crimes, etc, etc. More or less the only time they were able to get someone off the hook was when the police made a mistake. Otherwise, the criminals sunk themselves.
You're both right. It only keeps one image - it's called Default.png. Yet it's possible multiple versions could be retrieved if the file's data blocks on the flash disk have not yet been overwritten by another file.
Point is: iPhone is doing nothing nefarious, secretive or underhand, as some here would love to imagine. Yet forensics could discover more than a person might first imagine.