Identification of smartphone brand and model via forensic video analysis

• Every day the use of videos from mobile devices as evidence in legal proceedings is more usual and common.
• Image source acquisition identification is a branch of digital forensic analysis.
• We use of sensor pattern noise for source identification.
• We make a series of experiments which emulate similar situations to those that may occur in reality.

Recording videos on smartphones and other mobile devices, given their enormous popularity, is currently very common. The portability of these devices facilitates their use for recording videos in a wide variety of situations, including while witnessing criminal activities. These videos can be later used as evidence in legal proceedings. Therefore, the forensic analysis of videos taken with mobile device videos is important, and could serve for legal and also investigative purposes. It is necessary, however, to use techniques that are quite specific to this type of devices, given some peculiar features of their cameras. In this paper, we will address the issue of video source acquisition identification by presenting a technique based on sensor noise and wavelet transform extraction from video key frames. These frames are extracted using an efficient algorithm that takes their content into account, improving the selection of frames to be analyzed over past proposals. The scheme presented consists of four stages: (1) Key frames extraction, (2) sensor pattern noise extraction, (3) feature extraction, and (4) classifier training and prediction. We also present experimental results that support the validity of the techniques used and show promising results.