Hardware
Several pieces of hardware were required to perform this examination into Google Chrome Operating System artifacts. In some cases, the hardware may be crucial as some hardware have special handling requirements forensically and may in fact later be determined to have weaknesses in design that impacts any investigations which may have been performed on or
with the devices.
ZTC 2-in-1 Thunder Board M.2 (NGFF) Board Adapter. The ZTC 2-in-1 board was required in order to be able to connect the Chromebook’s SSD to the examination laptop to collect an image using Forensic Toolkit (FTK) Imager. This board essentially makes the small SSD drive fit into a typical SATA III socket.
Patuoxun USB 2.0 to SATA Converter Adapter Cable. This connected the ZTC 2-in-1 Thunder board into a USB slot on the examination laptop. When connecting the SSD removed from the Chromebook, the SSD appeared to Windows 7 to be an external USB HDD allowing the content capture by forensics imaging software.
Acer c720 Chromebook. An Acer c720 Chromebook was the test-bed examined. The c720 technical specifications are below (Acer.com, 2013). Intel Celeron 2955U 1.4 GHz (2MB Cache) CPU
Chrome Operating System update 30
2 GB DDR3L SDRAM memory
32 GB SSD (Serial ATA)
12-inch screen, Intel HD graphics, HDMI output
Built-in 802.11bgn wireless adapter
Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Series Model 7537 Touchscreen. The Inspiron laptop is the examination laptop used to process all data and compose this paper. The basic technical specifications are below (Dell.com, 2014).
15” Touchscreen laptop
16 GB DDR3L 1600 MHz memory
Built-in 802.11 ac dual band wireless + Bluetooth
Windows 8.1 Intel i7 1.9GHz CPU (4M cache)
