S. Goel (Ed.): ICDF2C 2009, LNICST 31, pp. 33–42, 2010. © Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2010 SMIRK: SMS Management and Information Retrieval Kit Ibrahim Baggili*, Ashwin Mohan, and Marcus Rogers Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates* Purdue University, West Lafayette IN 47901, USA baggili@gmail.com, {mohana,rogersmk}@Purdue.edu Abstract. There has been tremendous growth in the information environment since the advent of the Internet and wireless networks. Just as e-mail has been the mainstay of the web in its use for personal and commercial communication, one can say that text messaging or Short Message Service (SMS) has become synonymous with communication on mobile networks. With the increased use of text messaging over the years, the amount of mobile evidence has increased as well. This has resulted in the growth of mobile forensics. A key function of digital forensics is efficient and comprehensive evidence analysis which in- cludes authorship attribution. Significant work on mobile forensics has focused on data acquisition from devices and little attention has been given to the analy- sis of SMS. Consequentially, we propose a software application called: SMS Management and Information Retrieval Kit (SMIRK). SMIRK aims to deliver a fast and efficient solution for investigators and researchers to generate reports and graphs on text messaging. It also allows investigators to analyze the author- ship of SMS messages. Keywords: Cyber forensics, cellular phone forensics, forensic tools, SMS authorship attribution, post-hoc forensic analysis. 1 Introduction Research has shown that on the Internet, people turn to some sort of textual commu- nication setting to maintain their relationships (i.e., social networks) in a relatively safe environment. One such textual communication environment is SMS messaging on cellular phones. Mobile phones are widely used in the United States. In the first six months of 2006, the Cellular Telecommunication and Internet Association (CTIA) stated that there were 262.7 million U.S. wireless subscribers and wireless communi- cation had penetrated more than 84% of the total U.S. population. The CTIA also reported that 75 billion SMS messages were sent per month, from 7.2 billion in the first six months of 2005 and 12.2 Million in 2000. This is an average of 300 messages per individual per month. An SMS communication environment permits higher levels of visual anonymity when compared to face-to-face communication [1]. This anonymity can be misused by criminals to their own advantage. An example of the exploitation of visual ano- nymity is the case of Danielle Jones. Jones disappeared on the 18th of June in 2001