The Digital Footprints on the Run: A Forensic Examination of Android Running Workout Applications

Nunes, Fabian; Domingues, Patricio; Frade, Miguel

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.8/9970

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Authors

Nunes, Fabian

Domingues, Patricio

Frade, Miguel

Abstract(s)

This study applies a forensic examination to six distinct Android fitness applications centered around monitoring running activities. The applications are Adidas Running, MapMyWalk,Nike Run Club, Pumatrac, Runkeeper and Strava. Specifically, we perform a post mortem analysis of each application to find and document artifacts such as timelines and Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates of running workouts that could prove helpful in digital forensic investigations. First, we focused on the Nike Run Club application and used the gained knowledge to analyze the other applications, taking advantage of their similarity. We began by creating a test environment and using each application during a fixed period. This procedure allowed us to gather testing data, and, to ensure access to all data generated by the apps, we used a rooted Android smartphone. For the forensic analysis, we examined the data stored by the smartphone application and documented the forensic artifacts found. To ease forensic data processing, we created several Python modules for the well-known Android Logs Events And Protobuf Parser (ALEAPP) digital forensic framework. These modules process the data sources, creating reports with the primary digital artifacts, which include the workout activities and related GPS data.

Description

Funding: This research was funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia grant number UIDB 04524/2020 and by European Union grant number UIDB/EEA 50008/2020.
This article belongs to the Collection Innovative People-Centered Solutions Applied to Industries, Cities and Societies.

Keywords

Adidas Running Android DFIR MapMyWalk Nike Run Club Pumatrac Asics Runkeeper Strava ALEAPP

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.8/9970

Citation

Nunes, F.; Domingues, P.; Frade, M. The Digital Footprints on the Run: A Forensic Examination of Android Running Workout Applications. Future Internet 2024, 16, 304. https://doi.org/10.3390/ fi16090304 [MDPI and ACS Style]