Framework for Identifying Forensic Artifacts from Ride-hailing Android Applications
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Date
2025-03
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Different services are offered through our mobile devices as a result of the increasing
usage of smartphones in this world. One of these services is the ride-hailing service in
which the taxi transportation service is managed from a common operation center with
the help of driver and passenger applications that the end users have installed on their
smartphones. In our country, Ethiopia, there are many companies that offer this service,
such as Ride, Feres, ZayRide, Seregela, Safe, Taxiye, and others. Today, many crimes
such as theft, murder, etc. are committed against drivers or riders while working or using
this transportation service in Ethiopia. Current research focuses mainly on the forensic
investigation of social networks and banking applications. A research by K. Kiptoo
proposed a forensic investigation framework to identify forensic artifacts from Android
on-demand ride applications such as Uber, Little and Bolt that operate in Kenya. In
this research, we propose a forensic framework by customizing the existing framework
proposed by K. Kiptoo to enhance the identification of forensic artifacts from Android
based ride-hailing applications after experimentation with ride-hailing applications such
as Ride, Zayride and Feres. The proposed forensic framework for ride-hailing applications
involves six phases: Collection, Setting up and Configuration, Extraction and
Preservation, Application Database Location, Examination and Analysis, and finally
Reporting. While experimenting, we were able to recover valuable artifacts such as passenger
profile information, passenger device details, location data, time information, and
driver-related data from ride-hailing applications, which are crucial digital evidence in
the investigation of digital crimes. This research also investigated the level of role and
the challenges of using digital forensic evidence to close a criminal case by Ethiopian
law enforcement agencies using a specially designed questionnaire distributed to them.
The research findings show that even though its role as evidence usage is increasing, we
were able to identify major issues such as legal and procedural inconsistencies, lack of
expertise, resource limitation, and lack of clear forensic standards that may hinder the
use of digital evidence obtained from digital systems such as ride-hailing applications in
a digital world full of complex digital crimes.
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Keywords
Android, APK, Artifact, Digital Forensics, Ridehailing