Navman S30 Satnav device

I have seen a number of different Navman models now. All of them have subtle variations on how to process them. Although the underlying OS is Microsoft WinCE.NET 5.0 Core Version I did not have to access this device via Mobile Device Centre. After applying some write blocking to my USB port this device was accessible as a mass storage device allowing me to image it with Encase. I ended up with 114,759 sectors being imaged.

The next step I took was to track down and consult a manual for the device in order to establish its capabilities. I expect all devices to have saved Home, Favourites and Recent destinations and this device was no exception.

In addition however this device can save trip logs, pre-planned itineraries, pictures and be paired with a mobile phone.

Almost all the relevant data is stored within xml formatted files. Microsoft Excel 2007 is an excellent tool for examining these files and subsequently reporting on them. I use the Get External Data / From Other Sources / From XML Data Import option via the data tab and allow Excel to sort out the formatting.

A good place to start is the file paths.xml stored at the root of the partition. This file details the location of some of the relevant files.

This is a more definitive list:

• MyFavouriteLocations.xml - used to store the home location and favourites
• MyRecentLocations.xml - used to store Recents and also Journey Starts
  
• MyMultiStopLocations.xml - used to store saved multi stop journeys
• MyRoute.xml - used to store the current journey which is in effect the last journey -on the device I examined this file was deleted but recoverable
  
• UserSettings.xml – used to store device settings including where the unit was turned off
  

When a user enters a new address the menu shows previously entered towns or cities, road names and postcodes. This data is stored in the following files:

• DWRecentPocode.xml – Previously entered postcodes, most recent first
  
• DWRecentRoad.xml – Previously entered road names, most recent first
  
• DWRecentPlace.xml – Previously entered towns or cities, most recent first
  

There are a number of presumably back up files also containing the same (as far as I could see) xml formatted data:

• MyFavouriteLocations_bak.xml
• MyRecentLocations_bak.xml
  
• MyMultiStopLocations_bak.xml
  

There are also two files that appear to be temporary files which were deleted but recoverable, containing xml formatted data:

• MyRecentLocations_New.xml
  
• MyMultiStopLocations_New.xml
  

All of the above mentioned xml files are parsed very tidily using Microsoft Excel 2007. I use the same program to create an html version of the worksheet after a little tidying up. The longitude and latitude values need to be divided by 100,000. I populate a new column using the formula:

=HYPERLINK("http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q="&(K3/100000)&"+"&(L3/100000)&"","Click here to view in Google Maps")
The cell K3 contains the Latitude and L3 the Longitude. The formula creates a clickable hyperlink to the Lat/Long in google maps.

There are one or two other files of interest:

• destdata.dat - which contains the address used for the last navigated journey
  
• gpslog.ini - detailing the location of trip log data
  
• default_settings.xml -which in the FAVOURITES/ RECENTS/ MULTI-STOP section appears to detail the maximum number of favourites and recents
  
• .pcd - on the unit I examined I could not locate a .pcd file however I understand from Andy Sayers that this file if it exists contains the phonebook from a paired mobile phone
  
• Log001.log - again I did not see this file but if it exists it contains GPS track logs
  

Because we have physical access there is also a possibility of recovering relevant data from unallocated clusters. I located records in unallocated using the keyword <lat> .

References
Sat Nav Examination Guidance Notes (Andy Sayers)
Navman S-Series (S30, S50, S70 & S90i) User Manual

Binatone X350 UK&ROI 2nd edition GPS

This device can be purchased very cheaply now from places like Asda and ebuyer. It runs Astrob Turbodog4 satellite navigation software within a Microsoft WinCE.NET 5.0 Core Version OS. Although I have not examined one I believe a number of Navigo devices run similar software. It has an SD card slot which was unpopulated in the one I looked at. The internal memory can be accessed like many similar devices via Mobile Device Centre in Vista which makes available a volume entitled ResidentFlash. I disable writing to USB devices by modifying the registry (there are many utilities about to do this). Simply paste the text below into a text file, give it a .reg file extension and then execute it and then reboot.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies]
"WriteProtect"=dword:00000001

After copying and creating a logical evidence file of ResidentFlash I found three notable files within the MobileNavigator folder:

• RecentDest.dat
  
• FAV.DAT
  
• SystemSet.dat
  

RecentDest.dat stores up to fifty of the recently navigated to locations. These locations are stored in records of 104 bytes in length. The first record starts at the first byte of RecentDest.dat, so by viewing the file in Encase with the view pane set to hex and dragging the view to show 104 bytes per line (assuming you have twin monitors), it is possible to see all the relevant data. Each location record stores Longitude and Latitude as 8 byte doubles which unfortunately Encase does not natively decode. The data interpreter in Winhex can do this. The hex editor 0xED on a mac can also do this but rounds up to fewer decimal places than Winhex. So given a fully populated RecentDest.dat file you have one hundred doubles to decode. I turned to my friend Oliver Smith over at Cy4or who wrote me an enscript which parses out the records to a csv file. Email me with a brief note about who you are for a copy

Recent Destinations also log the time entered, so very unusually some meaningful time and date information may be extracted. Providing these times have been recorded whilst the device can see satellites they are accurate and stored at the configured time zone. If a destination is entered when the unit can not see the sky and if the battery had been previously discharged it appears that the recorded time and date would be soon after 00:00 hours 1st January 2007.

I have decoded each 104 byte record as shown in figure 1

Figure 1 (click on image for larger version)

FAV.DAT contains user configured Favourites stored in 536 byte records. Once again the Longitude/Latitude are stored as eight byte doubles in the first sixteen bytes of each record.

SystemSet.dat appears to store the users Home location and again the Longitude/Latitude are stored as eight byte doubles.

Within the MobileNavigator folder there is a folder entitled Trace. This was empty in the one I looked out however the manual states:

The unit is capable of logging all positioning information received from the GPS satellites during navigation. It then uses this information to draw a track of the route on the map. This enables you to review the route information at a later time.

I imagine that should this feature be enabled a file of some sort will be stored in this folder.

References

http://binatonegps.com/gps/download/manual/X350II%20User%20Guide%20(Turbo%20Dog)%20-%2020080910.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_precision_floating-point_format