IOS app archive
Discover deep insights into how any app has changed over time.
Law firm leverages our iOS app archive to establish timeline of security vulnerability remediation in active litigation.
Customer
A law firm representing clients in privacy litigation required forensically-sound evidence documenting the evolution of security vulnerabilities and remediation efforts across specific application versions. The firm needed verifiable historical records of application behavior, permissions, frameworks, and code-level changes to establish a definitive timeline of when the defendant became aware of vulnerabilities and when corrective measures were implemented.
Challenge
Establishing a defensible timeline of application security changes in litigation requires access to historical application binaries and the technical capability to perform comparative analysis across versions. Mobile applications are continuously updated, with previous versions becoming inaccessible once superseded. Traditional digital forensics approaches cannot retroactively analyze applications that are no longer available in app stores, creating evidentiary gaps that undermine, or may preclude legal arguments. Manual reverse engineering of available versions is time-consuming, technically complex, and cannot address the fundamental problem of missing historical data.
Solution
Disconnect's iOS App Archive provides access to historical snapshots of tens of millions of app binaries, enabling comprehensive longitudinal analysis across application versions. The platform allows legal teams to compare version-to-version changes in behavior, permissions, frameworks, SDKs, code implementations, and data flows. Customers can schedule automated alerts to monitor specific types of changes, and the platform delivers forensically-sound analysis that security teams and legal experts use to validate compliance, uncover emerging risks, and maintain continuous oversight of critical or high-risk applications.
Result
Our data successfully reconstructed a complete timeline of the application's security posture across 18 months and 12 application versions. The analysis definitively identified when the vulnerability was introduced, documented the defendant's subsequent awareness through version updates that partially addressed related issues, and established the timeline of full remediation.
Impact
The forensic integrity and comprehensiveness of Disconnect's historical application data provided the evidentiary foundation that was previously unavailable through any other means. The law firm integrated the platform into their digital forensics workflow for privacy and security litigation matters, utilizing the archive to conduct due diligence investigations and build defensible timelines in cases involving mobile application vulnerabilities.
Federal law enforcement agency utilizes iOS app archive to identify hidden surveillance infrastructure for criminal investigation.
Customer
A federal law enforcement agency conducting a criminal investigation obtained a suspect's mobile device and identified the applications installed and actively used by the subject. To build a comprehensive evidentiary picture, investigators required detailed and historical intelligence on the complete network of third-party services, SDK integrations, and data collection infrastructure embedded within those applications to determine which entities possessed potentially relevant data for subpoena.
Challenge
Modern mobile applications integrate dozens of third-party SDKs and backend services that collect, process, and store user data—often without user awareness or visible disclosure. These hidden data flows create a complex web of potential evidence sources that traditional forensic examination of the device itself cannot reveal retroactively. Investigators needed to understand not just what the suspect did within applications, but which third-party companies on specific dates were passively collecting behavioral data, location information, device identifiers, and usage patterns that could corroborate other evidence or establish critical timeline elements. Even if available, manual reverse engineering of each historical version of the application would be prohibitively time-consuming and require specialized technical expertise beyond typical law enforcement capabilities.
Solution
Disconnect's iOS App Archive provides access to historical snapshots of tens of millions of app binaries, enabling comprehensive forensic analysis of third-party integrations, SDK implementations, backend connections, and data collection infrastructure. The platform allows investigators to systematically identify every third-party service embedded within applications, understand what data each service collects, and map the complete surveillance and data collection architecture operating invisibly within the suspect's applications on any given date. This longitudinal analysis capability ensures investigators can examine the specific application versions present on the suspect's device, accounting for changes across updates.
Result
Using the iOS App Archive, investigators identified third-party SDK and backend service integrations across the suspect's applications that were collecting data during the relevant investigation timeframe. This intelligence enabled the agency to issue targeted subpoenas to advertising technology providers, analytics companies, location data aggregators, and other third-party services that possessed evidence not available through direct device forensics.
Impact
The iOS App Archive revealed an entire layer of digital evidence that would have remained invisible using traditional mobile forensics approaches. Agencies adopt the platform as standard investigative infrastructure, enabling digital forensics teams to systematically identify all potential third-party data sources during mobile device examinations and significantly expand the evidentiary scope of criminal investigations involving smartphones.