Citizen Lab Forensics Skill

Trit: -1 (MINUS - Validator) Category: investigative-journalism Source: Citizen Lab (University of Toronto), Amnesty Tech

Overview

Digital forensics techniques for detecting device compromise, analyzing malware indicators, and investigating targeted surveillance. Based on methodologies from Citizen Lab's Pegasus Project and Predator investigations.

Core Tools

MVT (Mobile Verification Toolkit)

# Install
pip install mvt

# iOS backup analysis
mvt-ios check-backup --output /tmp/mvt-results ~/iPhone-backup/

# Android APK analysis
mvt-android check-apks --output /tmp/mvt-results /path/to/apks/

# Check against known IOCs
mvt-ios check-backup --iocs /path/to/pegasus.stix2 ~/backup/

IOC Sources:

• https://github.com/AmnestyTech/investigations
• https://github.com/citizenlab/malware-indicators

ExifTool (Metadata Extraction)

# Extract all metadata
exiftool -a -u -g1 document.pdf

# Extract GPS coordinates
exiftool -gps:all image.jpg

# Remove metadata (for sanitization)
exiftool -all= document.pdf

# Recursive directory scan
exiftool -r -csv -ext pdf /path/to/documents/ > metadata.csv

YARA Rules

rule Pegasus_String_Indicators {
    meta:
        author = "Citizen Lab"
        description = "Detects Pegasus spyware string patterns"
    strings:
        $s1 = "bh4.4" ascii
        $s2 = "/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaScriptCore.framework" ascii
        $s3 = "webkit.org" ascii
    condition:
        2 of them
}

# Scan with YARA
yara -r pegasus_rules.yar /path/to/scan/

# Compile rules
yarac rules/*.yar compiled_rules

# Scan with compiled rules
yara compiled_rules /path/to/scan/

hachoir-metadata

from hachoir.parser import createParser
from hachoir.metadata import extractMetadata

parser = createParser("/path/to/file")
metadata = extractMetadata(parser)

for line in metadata.exportPlaintext():
    print(line)

Network Forensics

DNS Cache Probing

# Check if domain was recently resolved
dig +short @target-dns-server suspicious-domain.com

# DNS history via passive DNS
curl "https://api.passivetotal.org/v2/dns/passive?query=domain.com"

Certificate Pivoting

# Find related domains via certificate
curl "https://crt.sh/?q=%25.suspicious-domain.com&output=json" | jq

# Censys certificate search
censys search "parsed.names: suspicious-domain.com"

Infrastructure Mapping

# Using Censys Python library
from censys.search import CensysHosts

h = CensysHosts()
for host in h.search("services.http.response.body: 'unique-string'"):
    print(host["ip"], host["services"])

IOC Formats

STIX 2.1

{
  "type": "indicator",
  "spec_version": "2.1",
  "id": "indicator--8e2e2d2b-17d4-4cbf-938f-98ee46b3cd3f",
  "created": "2025-01-15T00:00:00.000Z",
  "modified": "2025-01-15T00:00:00.000Z",
  "name": "Pegasus Process Name",
  "pattern": "[process:name = 'bh']",
  "pattern_type": "stix",
  "valid_from": "2025-01-15T00:00:00.000Z"
}

MISP Format

{
  "Event": {
    "info": "Pegasus Spyware Indicators",
    "Attribute": [
      {
        "type": "domain",
        "value": "malicious-c2.com",
        "category": "Network activity",
        "to_ids": true
      }
    ]
  }
}

Integration with EpsteinGeoACSet

# Add forensic metadata to documents
add_part!(acset, :Document,
    doc_bates="EFTA00001234",
    doc_exif_extracted=true,
    doc_device_fingerprint="iPhone12,1",
    doc_gps_lat=18.3021,
    doc_gps_lon=-64.8181,
    doc_creation_software="Adobe Acrobat",
    doc_trit=Int8(-1)  # Validator role
)

DuckDB Schema

CREATE TABLE forensic_indicators (
    id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
    indicator_type VARCHAR,  -- 'domain', 'hash', 'ip', 'process', 'file'
    indicator_value VARCHAR NOT NULL,
    source VARCHAR,          -- 'citizen_lab', 'amnesty_tech', 'custom'
    confidence FLOAT,
    first_seen TIMESTAMP,
    last_seen TIMESTAMP,
    stix_id VARCHAR,
    trit INTEGER DEFAULT -1
);

CREATE TABLE device_analysis (
    id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
    device_id VARCHAR,
    device_type VARCHAR,     -- 'ios', 'android'
    analysis_date TIMESTAMP,
    mvt_version VARCHAR,
    indicators_matched INTEGER,
    compromise_detected BOOLEAN,
    report_path VARCHAR
);

GF(3) Triad

citizen-lab-forensics (-1) ⊗ icij-document-analysis (0) ⊗ graph-investigation (+1) = 0 ✓

CLI Recipes

# Full iOS analysis pipeline
mvt-ios check-backup \
  --iocs https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AmnestyTech/investigations/master/2021-07-18_nso/pegasus.stix2 \
  --output ./mvt-report \
  ~/iPhone-backup/

# Bulk metadata extraction to DuckDB
exiftool -r -csv -ext pdf -ext jpg -ext docx /evidence/ > metadata.csv
duckdb evidence.duckdb "CREATE TABLE metadata AS SELECT * FROM read_csv_auto('metadata.csv')"

# YARA scan with JSON output
yara -r -w rules/*.yar /evidence/ 2>/dev/null | \
  jq -Rs 'split("\n") | map(select(length > 0)) | map(split(" ") | {rule: .[0], file: .[1]})'

References

• Citizen Lab: https://citizenlab.ca/
• Amnesty Tech: https://www.amnesty.org/en/tech/
• MVT Documentation: https://docs.mvt.re/
• YARA Documentation: https://yara.readthedocs.io/

See Also

• boxxy-reverse-engineering

  - Firmware extraction

• radare2-hatchery

  - Binary analysis

• variant-analysis

  - Pattern-based vulnerability hunting

• icij-document-analysis

  - Document processing (trit 0)

• graph-investigation

  - Entity graphing (trit +1)