Forensic Analysis of the Recovery of Wickr’s Ephemeral Data on Android Platforms

This paper documents anti-forensics techniques of a secure messaging application named “Wickr” on the Android platforms. Advertised as an application that focuses on security, Wickr provides many anti-forensics features, such as ephemeral messaging and end-to-end encryption. This paper analyses Wickr in detail using experimental research methods. The results revealed how Wickr’s file deletion consisted of distinct stages beginning with a simple logical deletion and progressing to overwriting deleted files as the application operated.