A Study on the Processing of Timestamps in the Creation of Multimedia Files on Mobile Devices

Digital data can be manipulated easily, so information related to the timestamp is important in establishing the reliability of the data. The time values for a certain file can be extracted following the analysis of the filesystem metadata or file internals, and the information can be utilized to organize a timeline for a digital investigation. Suppose the reversal of a timestamp is found on a mobile device during this process. In this case, a more detailed analysis is required due to the possibility of anti-forensic activity, but little previous research has investigated the handling and possible manipulation of timestamps on mobile devices. Therefore, in this study, we determine how time values for multimedia files are handled according to the operating system or filesystem on mobile devices. We also discuss five types of timestamps—file created (C), last modified (M), last accessed (A), digitalized (Di), and filename (FN) of multimedia files, and experimented with their operational features across multiple devices such as smartphones and cameras.