OS X and iOS Handoff Introduction



During the 2014 Apple WorldWide Developers Conference, Apple announced a new feature available with iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) known as Handoff. This new feature allows a user to transfer their activity from their iPhone to their Mac, or vice-versa, almost instantaneously. These activities include browsing the web, email, writing a note, or using a Mac compatible application. Users will also be able to send text messages and make phone calls from their iPhones via their Mac.

The purpose of this project is to research the possibility of  artifacts being left behind by this process on either the iPhone or Mac. To accomplish this, we will generate data on both an iMac and an iPhone 5 without using the Handoff feature and analyze the results as a baseline. We will then generate data using the Handoff feature and analyze the results to see if any artifacts are left behind.

Our research questions are:

What artifacts does this feature leave behind on either the Mac or the iPhone?

Does this leave evidence of the iPhone being in proximity of the Mac, even if nothing was transferred between them?