Cellebrite Ltd. is a global company that provides law enforcement, military and intelligence, and enterprises with digital intelligence solutions for investigations and operations. The company develops software and hardware to provide data extraction, collaboration, and analysis of data from mobile devices, call data records, social media, computer and cloud sources.
Known for its mobile forensics capabilities, the company had roughly 45% of the global market share in 2017. Cellebrite introduced digital analytics offerings in 2016.
The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Japan's Sun Corporation, a publicly traded company listed on JASDAQ (6736/JQ) based in Nagoya, Japan.
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Overview
Cellebrite is headquartered in Petah Tikva, Israel.
The company's products and services are used by federal, national, state, and local law enforcement; intelligence agencies, military branches; corporate security and investigations; law firms; and private digital examiners.
Cellebrite's products and services improve the efficiency of digital investigations to combat human trafficking; and help solve crime, homicide, drug, gang, financial crimes and counter-terror investigations. In 2017, the company's technology was used by the Freeland Foundation, a non-governmental organization (NGO) in Thailand, where it helped authorities obtain valuable information that led to charges against 103 suspected traffickers including Lt. General Manas Kongpaen.
Since 2014, Cellebrite joined forces with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and Project VIC, in the global fight against child exploitation. After three years of success, the organizations expanded their partnership to expand their fight against child exploitation in 2017.
In March 2016, it was reported that Cellebrite offered to unlock an iPhone involved in the FBI-Apple encryption dispute. Later, after the FBI announced it had successfully accessed the iPhone thanks to a third party, a press report claimed Cellebrite had assisted with unlocking the device, which an FBI source denied.
The company has won a number of awards, including the industry Forensic 4:cast award for nine consecutive years as of 2017. In 2016, the company won the phone forensic hardware of the year, phone forensic software of the year and digital forensic organization of the year.
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History
Cellebrite was established in Israel in 1999. Yossi Carmil and Ron Serber, both of whom are linked to the founders' generation of the company, have been managing Cellebrite as Global Co-CEOs since 2005. Carmil and Serber have led company through a successful acquisition by Sun, into the forensic market, and then through a substantial growth phase that resulted in the company achieving a market leading position in mobile forensics and expanding into the broader digital intelligence space.
Cellebrite's first manufactured hardware and software offered a compressive phone-to-phone data transfer devices and offered contact synchronization and content transfer tools for mobile phones, intended for use by wireless carrier sales and support staff in retail stores.
Initially Cellebrite's commercial products were used as a tool for migration from IS-95 (CDMA) enabled mobile phones to the GSM standard. Later, Cellebrite Wireless Carriers & Retailers' Universal Memory Exchanger (UME) gained additional data extraction and transfer capabilities, and the company introduced additional solutions for mobile phone diagnostics, phone trade-in, and application management and delivery. Cellebrite's mobile life-cycle solutions would eventually be aligned under the Mobilogy brand name.
In 2007 Cellebrite entered the mobile forensics industry. Cellebrite's Mobile Forensics introduced mobile forensics products in 2007 under the family brand name 'Universal Forensic Extraction Device' (UFED). Cellebrite quickly captured market share by providing comprehensive logical extraction capabilities from mobile devices such as cellular phones and other hand-held mobile devices. This growth accelerated with the introduction of UFED Ultimate, which included the ability to recover deleted data and decipher encrypted and password protected information.
Also in 2007, Cellebrite was acquired by FutureDial Incorporated and one of its major shareholders, Sun Corporation in Japan. Today it is a fully owned subsidiary of Sun Corporation.
The company would continue to enhance its core UFED Ultimate product, and formally began to broaden beyond extraction of mobile device data to provide extraction capabilities for a wider range of digital data with the introduction of UFED Cloud Analyzer in 2015. The company also released new advanced services capabilities designed to bypass complex encryption on iOS and high running Samsung devices.
In 2016, the company made significant enhancements to its product portfolio with the introduction of Cellebrite Analytics, creating a full suite of solutions for the extraction and analysis of digital evidence from a wide range of sources.
In March 2018, Mobilogy a division of Cellebrite, was acquired by ESW Capital, LLC.
Rebrand and Mobilogy's Acquisition
In 2017, Cellebrite went through rebrand transition from being a mobile forensics company to a digital intelligence company. This move coincided with the carve out of the company's mobile lifecycle solutions as Mobilogy. Establishing Mobilogy as a standalone business reflected the desire to focus Cellebrite on the digital intelligence market opportunity and Mobilogy on the wireless operator and mobile after-market services spaces. Mobilogy was Cellebrite's core business for content transfer, which evolved to provide phone diagnostics and other key services to the wireless value chain. At its peak, the Cellebrite/Mobilogy mobile lifecycle solutions were in operation at more than 150 wireless operators, representing almost 150,000 retail stores.
In March 2018, Mobilogy a division of Cellebrite, was acquired by ESW Capital, LLC. Cellebrite continues to produce digital intelligence solutions used by federal, state, and local law enforcement; intelligence agencies; military branches; corporate security and investigations; law firms; and private digital forensic examiners. It claims to have more than 60,000 licenses deployed in more than 150 countries.
Law enforcement assistance
In April 2011, the Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union questioned whether Michigan State Police (MSP) troopers were using Cellebrite UFEDs to conduct unlawful searches of citizens' cell phones. However, the case had no relation to the company's technology itself as its UFEDs is not a surveillance tool, and more of a due process issue that was later clarified by the United States Supreme Court decision in Riley v. California on due process with law enforcement.
Since 2014, Cellebrite and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children have partnered to fight against child exploitation including child pornography, child sex crimes and other cyber crimes.
In 2016, Colorado police began integrating the Cellebrite UFED Link Analysis tool into their forensics workflow, the Boulder, Colorado, police department has improved its ability to act during those first crucial hours.
In March 2016, it was reported that Cellebrite offered to unlock an iPhone involved in the FBI-Apple encryption dispute. Later, after the FBI announced it had successfully accessed the iPhone thanks to a third party, a press report claimed Cellebrite had assisted with unlocking the device, which an FBI source denied. Later, in March 2018, the company acknowledged its capability to unlock encrypted iPhone models and with Android phones. Cellebrite noted it keeps information about the iPhone's flaws a top secret for the public's safety.
After a 19-year old college freshman from Chappaqua was killed in a texting and driving incident, Cellebrite's textalyzer and Evan's Law became the focus of a movement to stop distracted driving. Evan's Law or Senate Bill S6325A was introduced and remains on the New York State Senate floor.
In late 2017, Cellebrite's textalyzer went other examination by the Traffic Safety Committee under the direction of Governor Andrew Cuomo. Other law enforcement agencies across the United States have tested and are reviewing the technology since.
In April 2017, Oneida County Child Advocacy Center announced its new equipment, by Cellebrite, to help protect children from sex crimes.
In July 2017, a New York City Police department report on an overdose death that led to the city's first manslaughter charge against a State Island fentanyl dealer revealed Cellebrite's technology's key role in cracking the case and how the department plans to continue the use of the company's products.
In July 2017, The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) said it will continue to use forensic software provided by Cellebrite to support criminal investigations, and has sought to downplay fears that it has been remotely accessing handsets.
In August 2017, the Australian Federal Police began the process of buying Cellebrite technology to technology to hack into the smartphones of suspected criminals and terrorists to solve crimes and modernize the country's counter-terrorism efforts.
A 2017 data dump by an unknown hacker suggests Cellebrite's technology was possibly obtained by Turkey, a NATO Member, the United Arab Emirates and Russia. However, the report was unclear on the actual evidence of this and the source.
In January 2018, The Rupert Police Department in Idaho received help from its community to keep its high-tech digital evidence collecting tool, the Cellebrite Forensic Phone System.
Also in January 2018, it was revealed that Cellebrite's technology was a key part in the West Virginia State Troopers' hunt for child predators across West Virginia.
In February 2018, another report revealed Cellebrite's technology's key role in assisting New Jersey law enforcement in hunting down New Jersey's child pedophiles.
Products
Digital Forensics Field Offering
UFED InField
First responders can collect forensically-sound digital evidence anywhere and in real time. With minimal training, authorized users can quickly access and triage digital evidence - whether in the car or at the police station - to help improve the investigative workflow and reduce case backlogs.
Central Management System (CMS)
This solution simplifies the managing and control of deployed forensics tools, and helps reduce administration costs by remotely accessing devices and systems across your operation. It also maintains the latest versions, configurations and permissions to ensure the forensic integrity of the data collected.
Digital Forensics
Advanced Unlocking and Extraction Services
Unparalleled unlocking and extraction capabilities ensure that all digital evidence can be recovered. Leverage our industry-leading innovation and research to overcome the most complex encryption from many of the latest Apple iOS, Samsung Android and Huawei devices.
UFED Ultimate/Physical Analyzer
Delivering the broadest and deepest support for unlocking, extracting, and decoding data from mobile devices, users can thoroughly review logical, file system and physically extracted data to reveal critical digital evidence, and then share findings and collaborate with the investigative team.
UFED Cloud Analyzer
Using a forensically-sound, automated process within pre-approved, legal boundaries, authorized users can extract, preserve and analyze public domain and private social media data and other cloud-based content to discover new investigative paths and accelerate investigations.
Digital Analytics
Analytics Desktop & Analytics Enterprise
These innovative and ground-breaking solutions enable investigative teams to make the unknown "known" through unique machine learning algorithms for text, video and image analytics. Due to our state of the art analytical tools, investigations are often accelerated, resulting in faster identification of key digital evidence.
History of Innovation
Forensic breakthroughs
Cellebrite claims to have been the first in the mobile forensics industry to have achieved a number of smartphone forensic breakthroughs. These include physical extraction and decoding of BlackBerry flash memory (going beyond mass storage or IPD backups), Android user/pattern lock bypass for physical extraction and decoding, physical extraction from phones with Chinese chipsets (including MediaTek and Spreadtrum), TomTom GPS trip-log decryption and decoding, iOS device unlocking, and other research and development.
The company also claims a track record of being first with major capabilities, from physical extraction support for Blackberry to unlocking and extraction of encrypted iOS and high running Android models such as Samsung Galaxy S8. In addition to advanced unlocking and extraction services, the company claims to have a number of breakthroughs such as providing unlocking and decrypted physical extraction using Emergency Download Mode for Android devices with Qualcomm chipsets.
Cellebrite recently unveiled an application emulation capability that provides access to data from thousands of previously unsupported applications.
Forensic data integrity
Cellebrite claims to maintain the integrity of digital evidence:
- All cable connectors from subject (source) side act as a write blocker, being read-only via the on-board hardware chip set.
- Although a Faraday shielded bag, included in all ruggedized UFED kits, blocks external electromagnetic fields and wireless radio signals, the UFED has a SIM card cloning capability which also isolates the phone from the wireless network.
- Read-only boot loaders keep data from being altered or deleted during a physical extraction.
Data breach
On 12 January 2017, Cellebrite reported that an unknown hacker had acquired 900 GB worth of confidential data from Cellebrite's external servers. The data dump includes alleged usernames and passwords for logging into Cellebrite databases connected to the company's my.cellebrite domain, and also contains what appear to be evidence files from seized mobile phones, and logs from Cellebrite devices.
In popular culture
Cellebrite's signature technology, known as the Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED) was featured in the second series of BBC crime drama The Fall, where the show shows how digital forensics can be used to solve crimes.
References
External links
- Official website
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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