Authors: Jan-Niclas Hilgert (Fraunhofer FKIE), Martin Lambertz (Fraunhofer FKIE), Ann-Mariya Mateyna (Fraunhofer FKIE), and Alina Hakoupian (University of Bonn)
DFRWS APAC 2021
Abstract
Over the last years, various kinds of micromobility solutions including bikes and escooters have popped up in many cities across the globe. They provide a new, convenient form of transportation requiring only an easy-to-use application for the renting process, thus making micromobility solutions available to a wide user base. Due to this fact, investigators will positively encounter these applications during the analysis of a suspect’s mobile device in the future. Considering their area of application, these apps possibly contain valuable information about a suspect’s movements. This paper aims to shed a light on the question, what exact kind of data these applications store and how it can be accessed during an analysis. We come to the conclusion that all of the micromobility providers we examined, store crucial data on their servers including personal user data, payment information as well as a ride history. In favor of assistance during a forensic analysis of micromobility solutions, we implemented a forensic toolkit for the acquisition of this data making use of the application-specific APIs of the providers. Furthermore, we go a step further and investigate how reliable the acquired movement data is and show whether and how it is possible to create completely spoofed trips.