Retruth Reconnaissance: A Digital Forensic Analysis of Truth Social
Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
1-1-2024
Abstract
Truth Social is a social media platform founded by former President Donald J. Trump as an alternative to mainstream social media platforms. Like other alt-tech social media, such as Parler or MeWe, Truth Social’s looser content moderation rules may encourage more extreme user-based content. This includes biased language- posts with racist, sexist, ableist, or other discriminatory intent- and calls for violence. Digital forensic analysis can be useful in such cases, where law enforcement seeks to prevent or investigate extremist threats associated with a platform. This research fills a gap in the extant literature by offering a novel forensic analysis of Truth Social, based on established techniques. First, using mobile devices, account and application metadata was discovered. Next, network traffic analysis using a desktop computer revealed plaintext usernames and passwords. A detailed depiction of the forensic analysis performed for this paper is presented to aid future investigators.
Publication Source (Journal or Book title)
Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, LNICST
First Page
96
Last Page
113
Recommended Citation
Brown, J., & Baggili, I. (2024). Retruth Reconnaissance: A Digital Forensic Analysis of Truth Social. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, LNICST, 570 LNICST, 96-113. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56580-9_6