Learning Android Forensics

ADB on a rooted device

We have already seen how the ADB tool can be used to interact with the device and execute certain commands on the device. However, on a normal Android phone, certain locations, such as /data/data, cannot be accessed. For example, the following the command-line output appears when you try to access /data/data on a normal device:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools>adb.exe shell
shell@android:/ $ cd /data/data
cd /data/data
shell@android:/data/data $ ls
ls
opendir failed, Permission denied

This is because the private data of all the applications is stored in this folder. Thus, the security is enforced by Android. Only the root user has access to this location. Hence, on a rooted device, you will be able ...