CCI Floats Tender For Digital Forensic Services

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has released a tender for a “Digital Forensic Service Provider” to carry out tasks like acquisition, extraction and analysis of digital evidence from various electronic devices like mobile phones, computers or storage devices. The vendors will work on data pertaining to communications between parties, financial transactions, relationship resolution and presentation of analysed data.

The CCI requires vendors to be able to perform a wide variety of data extraction related tasks, including breaking encryptions, cracking passwords, and accessing hidden data. They must also be able to retrieve deleted data from log files or reconstruct a data base using third-party tools. Further, vendors should also be able to recreate file signatures, deleted files and partially broken or overwritten files from partially recovered data.

Data retrieval from mobile applications, including text messages, voice notes, call records, documents and mobile notes is also expected. The evidence should be collected and recorded in compliance with the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, states the tender.

Vendors must also have a number of data remediation and presentation capacities. These include de-duplication of data, removal of system files, culling of files based on file types and partition wise, reduction of repeated data, and presenting the data in a format useful for the investigating officer.

The tender also contains data protection requirements which prohibit making copies of the data or metadata found during investigations or its transmission to third parties.

CCI To Use Law Enforcement Tools To Crack Devices

The tender suggests a list of software vendors should have like Cellebrite UFED, Cellebrite’s cloud analyser, UFED Physical Analyser and Oxygen Detective. These tools are popular among law enforcement in India, as covered by MediaNama in the past.

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Cellebrite is an Israeli firm that makes tools capable of bypassing locks and PINs on smartphones, including Apple devices. UFED Cloud Analyser allows one to extract social media data as well as instant messaging, file storage, web pages, and other cloud-based content. Meanwhile, UFED physical analyser is a tool that can bypass pattern locks/passwords/PIN in Android devices including HTC, Motorola, Samsung Galaxy S, SII, SII family, and more. Police also said that the device should extract data from BlackBerry devices, Nokia BB5 devices, and so on.

Oxygen Forensics is a Russian firm that sells Detective, a software “designed to extract, decode, and analyze data.” The company’s official website states that it is capable of extracting data from over 31,000 mobile devices, and can “extract more cloud services than any other digital forensic tool on the market,” including those of messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram.

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