Well done is better than well said.

One of my friends recently got the Motorola Atrix 4G on AT&T. I have the original Droid on Verizon and tried to talk him into leaving AT&T, but he had to have the Atrix – he didn’t care how poor AT&T’s service is. This is his first smartphone and now as true with any new smartphone owner, he needs to fill it up with apps! Rather than giving him a straight list of what Android apps I am running, I decided to make this post so I can go into brief detail about what each app does, why I’m using it, and how I’m using it.

Security

KeePassDroid – As I mentioned in a previous article about computer security, I use KeePass – not KeyPass – to store my passwords. Every website I belong to I have a different password over 30 characters in length. I’m no savant and cannot remember passwords that long for that many websites. With KeePassDroid, I can get access to all of my passwords after I enter my main password. All you need to do is select the account information that you would like to login to and KeePass makes it easy to copy and paste the username and password easily, as many times as you need (until you tell it to clear them).

Lookout Mobile Security is a nice anti-virus program for your phone that can prevent mobile threats from installing themselves on your phone. Lookout also protects your browsing and privacy, and allows you to make backups of your data. It also has a nice feature to help you locate your missing device, and allows you to wipe it remotely for when the information needs to remain confidential and the phone may have been stolen.

Prey Anti-Theft – The Prey Project is an open-source application that helps you keep track of your phone or other mobile devices. It’s lighter than Lookout because it is not checking your phone for malware. Prey uses geolocation to track your phone (GPS must be enabled) and can connect to wi-fi if it does not have access to the internet. You can remove important files from your phone in case it has been stolen, take pictures of the thief, or lockout the user. Both tracking features offered by Prey and Lookout are great to help police track down your stolen phone.

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In the lab there are multiple pieces of hardware, the typical stuff, such as write blockers, imaging and wiping devices, etc. Each piece of hardware with updatable firmware needs to be kept up to date, but hand-written logs take up physical space, can be modified, and be a pain to organize and keep track of. However, updating the firmware and providing a log of when the hardware was updated and validated is helpful when testifying to the verification of the tool. Rather than using pen and paper to keep track of these updates, we’ve turned to secure software.

With a goal of being organized and up to date, the lab has started using the free program Forensic CaseNotes, provided by QCC Information Security. CaseNotes is a lightweight program that runs on Microsoft operating systems with a purpose “to allow forensic analysts and examiners of any discipline to securely record their contemporaneous notes electronically” [http://www.qccis.com/forensic-tools]. The reason I am not just using a normal spreadsheet is because of some of the features of CaseNotes which include:

• Secure “write-once, read-many” style of case note data capture
• Full audit trail of case note data entry and meta data edits in a self contained log
• Tamper evident storage of data using internal MD5 hashes for all data entered
• No use of heavy database technologies – all you need is the program and your case file
• Use of AES 512bit encryption (optional) to further secure data in sensitive cases

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